“In page 14 we have a large assertion that ‘the Eloisa alone is sufficient to convict him (Pope) of gross licentiousness.’ Thus, out it comes at last—Mr. B. does accuse Pope of ‘gross licentiousness,’ and grounds the charge upon a Poem. The licentiousness is a ‘grand peut-être,’ according to the turn of the times being:—the grossness I deny.

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On the contrary, I do believe that such a subject never was, nor ever could be, treated by any poet with so much delicacy mingled with, at the same time, such true and intense passion. Is the ‘Atys’ of Catullus licentious? No, nor even gross; and yet Catullus is often a coarse writer. The subject is nearly the same, except that Atys was the suicide of his manhood, and Abelard the victim.

“The ‘licentiousness’ of the story was not Pope’s,—it was a fact. All that it had of gross he has softened; all that it had of indelicate he has purified; all that it had of passionate he has beautified; all that it had of holy he has hallowed. Mr. Campbell has admirably marked this in a few words (I quote from memory), in drawing the distinction between Pope and Dryden, and pointing out where Dryden was wanting. ‘I fear,’ says he, ‘that had the subject of ‘Eloisa’ fallen into his (Dryden’s) hands, that he would have given us but a coarse draft of her passion.’ Never was the delicacy of Pope so much shown as in this poem. With the facts and the letters of ‘Eloisa’ he has done what no other mind but that of the best and purest of poets could have accomplished with such materials. Ovid, Sappho (in the Ode called hers)—all that we have of ancient, all that we have of modern poetry, sinks into nothing compared with him in this production.

“Let us hear no more of this trash about ‘licentiousness.’ Is not ‘Anacreon’ taught in our schools?—translated, praised, and edited? * * * * * and are the English schools or the English women the more corrupt for all this? When you have thrown the ancients into the fire, it will be time to denounce the moderns. ‘Licentiousness!’—there is more real mischief and sapping licentiousness in a single French prose novel, in a Moravian hymn, or a German comedy, than in all the actual poetry that ever was penned or poured forth since the rhapsodies of Orpheus. The sentimental anatomy of Rousseau and Mad. de S. are far more formidable than any quantity of verse. They are so, because they sap the principles by reasoning upon the passions; whereas poetry is in itself passion, and does not systematize. It assails, but does not argue; it may be wrong, but it does not assume pretensions to optimism.”

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Mr. Bowles having, in his pamphlet, complained of some anonymous communication which he had received, Lord Byron thus comments on the circumstance.

“I agree with Mr. B. that the intention was to annoy him; but I fear that this was answered by his notice of the reception of the criticism. An anonymous writer has but one means of knowing the effect of his attack. In this he has the superiority over the viper; he knows that his poison has taken effect when he hears the victim cry;—the adder is deaf. The best reply to an anonymous intimation is to take no notice directly nor indirectly. I wish Mr. B. could see only one or two of the thousand which I have received in the course of a literary life, which, though begun early, has not yet extended to a third part of his existence as an author. I speak of literary life only;—were I to add personal, I might double the amount of anonymous letters. If he could but see the violence, the threats, the absurdity of the whole thing, he would laugh, and so should I, and thus be both gainers.

“To keep up the farce, within the last month of this present writing (1821), I have had my life threatened in the same way which menaced Mr. B.’s fame, excepting that the anonymous denunciation was addressed to the Cardinal Legate of Romagna, instead of to * * * *. I append the menace in all its barbaric but literal Italian, that Mr. B. may be convinced; and as this is the only ‘promise to pay’ which the Italians ever keep, so my person has been at least as much exposed to ‘a shot in the gloaming’ from ‘John Heatherblutter’ (see Waverley), as ever Mr. B’s glory was from an editor. I am, nevertheless, on horseback and lonely for some hours (one of them twilight) in the forest daily; and this, because it was my ‘custom in the afternoon,’ and that I believe if the tyrant cannot escape amidst his guards (should it be so written), so the humbler individual would find precautions useless.”

“Mr. Bowles has no reason to ‘succumb’ but to Mr. Bowles. As a poet, the author of ‘the Missionary’ may compete with the foremost of his cotemporaries. Let it be recollected, that all my previous opinions

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of Mr. Bowles’s poetry were written long before the publication of his last and best poem; and that a poet’s last poem should be his best, is his highest praise. But, however, he may duly and honourably rank with his living rivals, &c. &c. &c.”

“It is worthy of remark that, after all this outcry about ‘in-door nature’ and ‘artificial images,’ Pope was the principal inventor of that boast of the English, Modern Gardening. He divides this honour with Milton. Hear Warton:—‘It hence appears that this enchanting art of modern gardening, in which this kingdom claims a preference over every nation in Europe, chiefly owes its origin and its improvements to two great poets, Milton and Pope.’

“Walpole (no friend to Pope) asserts that Pope formed Kent’s taste, and that Kent was the artist to whom the English are chiefly indebted for diffusing ‘a taste in laying out grounds.’ The design of the Prince of Wales’s garden was copied from Pope’s at Twickenham. Warton applauds ‘his singular effort of art and taste, in impressing so much variety and scenery on a spot of five acres.’ Pope was the first who ridiculed the ‘formal, French, Dutch, false and unnatural taste in gardening,’ both in prose and verse. (See, for the former, ‘the Guardian.’)

“‘Pope has given not only some of our first but best rules and observations on Architecture and Gardening.’ (See Warton’s Essay, vol. ii. p. 237, &c. &c.)

“Now, is it not a shame, after this, to hear our Lakers in ‘Kendal green,’ and our Bucolical Cockneys, crying out (the latter in a wilderness of bricks and mortar) about ‘Nature,’ and Pope’s ‘artificial in-door habits?’ Pope had seen all of nature that England alone can supply. He was bred in Windsor Forest, and amidst the beautiful scenery of Eton; he lived familiarly and frequently at the country seats of Bathurst, Cobham, Burlington, Peterborough, Digby, and Bolingbroke; amongst whose seats was to be numbered Stowe. He made his own little ‘five acres’ a model to Princes, and to the first of our artists who imitated

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nature. Warton thinks ‘that the most engaging of Kent’s works was also planned on the model of Pope’s—at least in the opening and retiring shades of Venus’s Vale.’

“It is true that Pope was infirm and deformed; but he could walk, and he could ride (he rode to Oxford from London at a stretch), and he was famous for an exquisite eye. On a tree at Lord Bathurst’s is carved, ‘Here Pope sang,’—he composed beneath it. Bolingbroke, in one of his letters, represents them both writing in the hayfield. No poet ever admired Nature more, or used her better, than Pope has done, as I will undertake to prove from his works, prose and verse, if not anticipated in so easy and agreeable a labour. I remember a passage in Walpole, somewhere, of a gentleman who wished to give directions about some willows to a man who had long served Pope in his grounds: ‘I understand, sir,’ he replied: ‘you would have them hang down, sir, somewhat poetical.’ Now if nothing existed but this little anecdote, it would suffice to prove Pope’s taste for Nature, and the impression which he had made on a common-minded man. But I have already quoted Warton and Walpole (both his enemies), and, were it necessary, I could amply quote Pope himself for such tributes to Nature as no poet of the present day has even approached.

“His various excellence is really wonderful: architecture, painting, gardening, all are alike subject to his genius. Be it remembered, that English gardening is the purposed perfectioning of niggard Nature, and that without it England is but a hedge-and-ditch, double-post-and-rail, Hounslow-heath and Clapham-common sort of country, since the principal forests have been felled. It is, in general, far from a picturesque country. The case is different with Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; and I except also the lake counties and Derbyshire, together with Eton, Windsor, and my own dear Harrow on the Hill, and some spots near the coast. In the present rank fertility of ‘great poets of the age,’ and ‘schools of poetry’—a word which, like ‘schools of eloquence’ and of ‘philosophy,’ is never introduced till the decay of the art has increased with the number of its professors—in the present day, then, there have sprung up two sorts of Naturals;—the Lakers, who whine about Nature because they live in Cumberland; and their under-sect (which some one

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has maliciously called the ‘Cockney School’), who are enthusiastical for the country, because they live in London. It is to be observed, that the rustical founders are rather anxious to disclaim any connexion with their metropolitan followers, whom they ungraciously review, and call cockneys, atheists, foolish fellows, bad writers, and other hard names not less ungrateful than unjust. I can understand the pretensions of the aquatic gentlemen of Windermere to what Mr. B * * terms ‘entusumusy,’ for lakes, and mountains, and daffodils, and buttercups; but I should be glad to be apprized of the foundation of the London propensities of their imitative brethren to the same ‘high argument.’ Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge have rambled over half Europe, and seen Nature in most of her varieties (although I think that they have occasionally not used her very well); but what on earth—of earth, and sea, and Nature—have the others seen? Not a half, nor a tenth part so much as Pope. While they sneer at his Windsor Forest, have they ever seen any thing of Windsor except its brick?
* * *

“When they have really seen life—when they have felt it—when they have travelled beyond the far distant boundaries of the wilds of Middlesex—when they have overpassed the Alps of Highgate, and traced to its sources the Nile of the New River—then, and not till then, can it properly be permitted to them to despise Pope; who had, if not in Wales, been near it, when he described so beautifully the ‘artificial’ works of the Benefactor of Nature and mankind, the ‘Man of Ross,’ whose picture, still suspended in the parlour of the inn, I have so often contemplated with reverence for his memory, and admiration of the poet, without whom even his own still existing good works could hardly have preserved his honest renown. * * * * *

“If they had said nothing of Pope, they might have remained ‘alone with their glory’ for aught I should have said or thought about them or their nonsense. But if they interfere with the little ‘Nightingale’ of Twickenham, they may find others who will bear it—I won’t. Neither time, nor distance, nor grief, nor age, can ever diminish my veneration for him, who is the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence. The delight of my boyhood, the study of my manhood, perhaps (if allowed to me to attain

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it) he may be the consolation of my age. His poetry is the Book of Life. Without canting, and yet without neglecting, religion, he has assembled all that a good and great man can gather together of moral wisdom clothed in consummate beauty. Sir William Temple observes, ‘That of all the members of mankind that live within the compass of a thousand years, for one man that is born capable of making a great poet, there may be a thousand born capable of making as great generals and ministers of state as any in story.’ Here is a statesman’s opinion of poetry: it is honourable to him and to the art. Such a ‘poet of a thousand years’ was Pope. A thousand years will roll away before such another can be hoped for in our literature. But it can want them—he himself is a literature.

“One word upon his so brutally abused translation of Homer. ‘Dr. Clarke, whose critical exactness is well known, has not been able to point out above three or four mistakes in the sense through the whole Iliad. The real faults of the translation are of a different kind.’ So says Warton, himself a scholar. It appears by this, then, that he avoided the chief fault of a translator. As to its other faults, they consist in his having made a beautiful English poem of a sublime Greek one. It will always hold. Cowper and all the rest of the blank pretenders may do their best and their worst: they will never wrench Pope from the hands of a single reader of sense and feeling.

“The grand distinction of the under forms of the new school of poets is their vulgarity. By this I do not mean that they are coarse, but ‘shabby-genteel,’ as it is termed. A man may be coarse and yet not vulgar, and the reverse. Burns is often coarse, but never vulgar. Chatterton is never vulgar, nor Wordsworth, nor the higher of the Lake school, though they treat of low life in all its branches. It is in their finery that the new under school are most vulgar, and they may be known by this at once; as what we called at Harrow ‘a Sunday blood’ might be easily distinguished from a gentleman, although his clothes might be the better cut, and his boots the best blackened, of the two;—probably because he made the one or cleaned the other with his own hands.

“In the present case, I speak of writing, not of persons. Of the latter, I know nothing; of the former, I judge as it is found. **

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** They may be honourable and gentlemanly men, for what I know, but the latter quality is studiously excluded from their publications. They remind me of Mr. Smith and the Miss Broughtons at the Hampstead Assembly, in ‘Evelina.’ In these things (in private life, at least), I pretend to some small experience; because, in the course of my youth, I have seen a little of all sorts of society, from the Christian prince and the Mussulman sultan and pacha, and the higher ranks of their countries, down to the London boxer, the ‘flash and the swell,’ the Spanish muleteer, the wandering Turkish dervise, the Scotch highlander, and the Albanian robber;—to say nothing of the curious varieties of Italian social life. Far be it from me to presume that there are now, or can be, such a thing as an aristocracy of poets; but there is a nobility of thought and of style, open to all stations, and derived partly from talent, and partly from education,—which is to be found in Shakspeare, and Pope, and Burns, no less than in Dante and Alfieri, but which is nowhere to be perceived in the mock birds and bards of Mr. Hunt’s little chorus. If I were asked to define what this gentlemanliness is, I should say that it is only to be defined by examples—of those who have it, and those who have it not. In life, I should say that most military men have it, and few naval; that several men of rank have it, and few lawyers; that it is more frequent among authors than divines (when they are not pedants); that fencing-masters have more of it than dancing-masters, and singers than players; and that (if it be not an Irishism to say so) it is far more generally diffused among women than among men. In poetry, as well as writing in general, it will never make entirely a poet or a poem; but neither poet nor poem will ever be good for any thing without it. It is the salt of society, and the seasoning of composition. Vulgarity is far worse than downright blackguardism; for the latter comprehends wit, humour, and strong sense at times; while the former is a sad abortive attempt at all things, ‘signifying nothing.’ It does not depend upon low themes, or even low language, for Fielding revels in both;—but is he ever vulgar? No. You see the man of education, the gentleman, and the scholar, sporting with his subject,—its master, not its slave. Your vulgar writer is always most vulgar, the higher his subject; as the man who showed the menagerie at Pidcock’s was wont to say,

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‘This, gentlemen, is the Eagle of the Sun, from Archangel in Russia: the otterer it is, the igherer he flies.’”

In a note on a passage relative to Pope’s lines upon Lady Mary W. Montague, he says—

“I think that I could show, if necessary, that Lady Mary W. Montague was also greatly to blame in that quarrel, not for having rejected, but for having encouraged him; but I would rather decline the task—though she should have remembered her own line, ‘He comes too near, that comes to be denied.’ I admire her so much—her beauty, her talents—that I should do this reluctantly. I, besides, am so attached to the very name of Mary, that as Johnson once said, ‘If you called a dog Harvey, I should love him;’ so, if you were to call a female of the same species ‘Mary,’ I should love it better, than others (biped or quadruped) of the same sex with a different appellation. She was an extraordinary woman: she could translate Epictetus, and yet write a song worthy of Aristippus. The lines,

‘And when the long hours of the public are past, And we meet, with champaigne and a chicken, at last, May every fond pleasure that moment endear! Be banish’d afar both discretion and fear! Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd, He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud, Till,’ &c. &c.

There, Mr. Bowles!—what say you to such a supper with such a woman? and her own description too? Is not her ‘champaigne and chicken’ worth a forest or two? Is it not poetry? It appears to me that this stanza contains the ‘purée’ of the whole philosophy of Epicurus:—I mean the practical philosophy of his school, not the precepts of the master; for I have been too long at the university not to know that the philosopher was himself a moderate man. But after all, would not some of us have been as great fools as Pope? For my part, I wonder that, with his quick feelings, her coquetry, and his disappointment, he did no more,—instead of writing some lines, which are to be condemned if false, and regretted if true.”

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“If I had but known your notion about Switzerland before, I should have adopted it at once. As it is, I shall let the child remain in her convent, where she seems healthy and happy, for the present; but I shall feel much obliged if you will inquire, when you are in the cantons, about the usual and better modes of education there for females, and let me know the result of your opinions. It is some consolation that both Mr. and Mrs. Shelley have written to approve entirely my placing the child with the nuns for the present. I can refer to my whole conduct, as having neither spared care, kindness, nor expense, since the child was sent to me. The people may say what they please, I must content myself with not deserving (in this instance) that they should speak ill.

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“I have not got any copy (nor have yet had) of the letter on Bowles; of course I should be delighted to send it to you. How is Mrs. H.? well again, I hope. Let me know when you set out. I regret that I cannot meet you in the Bernese Alps this summer, as I once hoped and intended. With my best respects to madam,

“A Milan paper states that the play has been represented and universally condemned. As remonstrance has been vain, complaint would be useless. I presume, however, for your own sake (if not for mine), that you and my other friends will have at least published my different protests against its being brought upon the stage at all; and have shown that Elliston (in spite of the writer) forced it upon the theatre. It would be nonsense to say that this has not vexed me a good deal, but I am not dejected, and I shall not take the usual resource of blaming the public (which was in the right), or my friends for not preventing—what they could not help, nor I neither—a forced representation by a speculating manager. It is a pity, that you did not show them its unfitness for the stage before the play was published, and exact a promise from the managers not to act it. In case of their refusal, we would not have published it at all. But this is too late.

“P.S. I enclose Mr. Bowles’s letters; thank him in my name for their candour and kindness.—Also a letter for Hodgson, which pray forward. The Milan paper states that I ‘brought forward the play!!!’

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This is pleasanter still. But don’t let yourself be worried about it; and if (as is likely) the folly of Elliston checks the sale, I am ready to make any deduction, or the entire cancel of your agreement.

“You will of course not publish my defence of Gilchrist, as, after Bowles’s good humour upon the subject, it would be too savage.

“If any part of the letter to Bowles has (unintentionally, as far as I remember the contents) vexed you, you are fully avenged; for I see by an Italian paper that, notwithstanding all my remonstrances through all my friends (and yourself among the rest), the managers persisted in attempting the tragedy, and that it has been ‘unanimously hissed!!’ This is the consolatory phrase of the Milan paper (which detests me cordially and abuses me, on all occasions, as a Liberal), with the addition, that I ‘brought the play out’ of my own good will.

“All this is vexatious enough, and seems a sort of dramatic Calvinism—predestined damnation, without a sinner’s own fault. I took all the pains poor mortal could to prevent this inevitable catastrophe—partly by appeals of all kinds up to the Lord Chamberlain, and partly to the fellows themselves. But, as remonstrance was vain, complaint is useless. I do not understand it—for Murray’s letter of the 24th, and all his preceding ones, gave me the strongest hopes that there would be no representation. As yet, I know nothing but the fact, which I presume to be true, as the date is Paris, and the 30th. They must have been in a hell of a hurry for this damnation, since I did not even know that it was published; and, without its being first published, the histrions could not

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have got hold of it. Any one might have seen, at a glance, that it was utterly impracticable for the stage; and this little accident will by no means enhance its merit in the closet.

“Well, patience is a virtue, and, I suppose, practice will make it perfect. Since last year (spring, that is) I have lost a lawsuit, of great importance, on Rochdale collieries—have occasioned a divorce—have had my poesy disparaged by Murray and the critics—my fortune refused to be placed on an advantageous settlement (in Ireland) by the trustees—my life threatened last month (they put about a paper here to excite an attempt at my assassination, on account of politics, and a notion which the priests disseminated that I was in a league against the Germans)—and, finally, my mother-in-law recovered last fortnight, and my play was damned last week! These are like ‘the eight-and-twenty misfortunes of Harlequin.’ But they must be borne. If I give in, it shall be after keeping up a spirit at least. I should not have cared so much about it, if our southern neighbours had not bungled us all out of freedom for these five hundred years to come.

“Did you know John Keats? They say that he was killed by a review of him in the Quarterly—if he be dead, which I really don’t know. I don’t understand that yielding sensitiveness. What I feel (as at this present) is an immense rage for eight-and-forty hours, and then, as usual—unless this time it should last longer. I must get on horseback to quiet me.

“Francis I. wrote, after the battle of Pavia, ‘All is lost except our honour.’ A hissed author may reverse it—‘Nothing is lost, except our honour.’ But the horses are waiting, and the paper full. I wrote last week to you.”

“By the papers of Thursday, and two letters of Mr. Kinnaird, I perceive that the Italian gazette had lied most Italically, and that the

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drama had not been hissed, and that my friends had interfered to prevent the representation. So it seems they continue to act it, in spite of us all: for this we must ‘trouble them at ’size.’ Let it by all means be brought to a plea: I am determined to try the right, and will meet the expenses. The reason of the Lombard lie was that the Austrians—who keep up an Inquisition throughout Italy, and a list of names of all who think or speak of any thing but in favour of their despotism—have for five years past abused me in every form in the Gazette of Milan, &c. I wrote to you a week ago on the subject.

“Now I should be glad to know what compensation Mr. Elliston would make me, not only for dragging my writings on the stage in five days, but for being the cause that I was kept for four days (from Sunday to Thursday morning, the only post-days) in the belief that the tragedy had been acted and ‘unanimously hissed;’ and this with the addition that I ‘had brought it upon the stage,’ and consequently that none of my friends had attended to my request to the contrary. Suppose that I had burst a blood-vessel, like John Keats, or blown my brains out in a fit of rage,—neither of which would have been unlikely a few years ago. At present I am, luckily, calmer than I used to be, and yet I would not pass those four days over again for—I know not what*.

* The account, given by Madame Guiccioli, of his anxiety on this occasion fully corroborates his own:—“His quiet was, in spite of himself; often disturbed by public events, and by the attacks which, principally in his character of author, the journals levelled at him. In vain did he protest that he was indifferent to these attacks. The impression was, it is true, but momentary, and he, from a feeling of noble pride, but too much disdained to reply to his detractors. But, however brief his annoyance was, it was sufficiently acute to occasion him much pain, and to afflict those who loved him. Every occurrence relative to the bringing Marino Faliero on the stage caused him excessive inquietude. On the occasion of an article in the Milan Gazette, in which mention was made of this affair, he wrote to me in the following manner:—‘You will see here confirmation of what I told you the other day! I am sacrificed in every way, without knowing the why or the wherefore. The tragedy in question is not (nor ever was) written for, or adapted to, the stage; nevertheless, the plan is not romantic; it is rather regular than otherwise;—in point of unity of time, indeed, perfectly regular, and failing but slightly in unity of place. You well know whether it was ever my intention to have it acted, since it was written at your side, and at a period assuredly rather more tragical to me as a man than as an author; for you were in affliction and peril. In the mean time, I learn from your Gazette that a cabal and party has been formed, while I myself have never taken the slightest step in the business. It is said that the author read it aloud!!!—here, probably, at Ravenna?

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“I wrote to you to keep up your spirits, for reproach is useless always, and irritating—but my feelings were very much hurt, to be dragged like a gladiator to the fate of a gladiator by that ‘retiarius,’ Mr. Elliston. As to his defence and offers of compensation, what is all this to the purpose? It is like Louis the XIVth. who insisted upon buying at any price Algernon Sydney’s horse, and, on his refusal, on taking it by force, Sydney shot his horse. I could not shoot my tragedy, but I would have flung it into the fire rather than have had it represented.

“I have now written nearly three acts of another (intending to complete it in five), and am more anxious than ever to be preserved from such a breach of all literary courtesy and gentlemanly consideration.

“The Chancellor has behaved nobly. You have also conducted yourself in the most satisfactory manner; and I have no fault to find with any body but the stage-players, and their proprietor. I was always so civil to Elliston personally that he ought to have been the last to attempt to injure me.

“There is a most rattling thunder-storm pelting away at this present

—and to whom? perhaps to Fletcher!!!—that illustrious literary character, &c. &c.’”—“Ma però la sua tranquillità era suo malgrado sovente alterata dalle publiche vicende, e dagli attachi che spesso si direggevano a lui nei giornali come ad autore principalmente. Era invano che egli protestava indifferenza per codesti attachi. L’impressione non era é vero che momentanea, e purtroppo per una nobile fierezza sdegrava sempre di rispondere ai suoi dettratori. Ma per quanto fosse breve quella impressione era però assai forte per farlo molto soffrire e per affliggere quelli che lo amavano. Tuttociò che ebbe luogo per la rappresentazione del suo Marino Faliero lo inquietò pure moltissimo e dietro ad un articolo di una Gazetta di Milano in cui si parlava di quell’ affare egli mi scrisse così—‘Ecco la verità di ciò che io vi dissi pochi giorni fa, come vengo sacrificato in tutte le maniere senza sapere il perché e il come. La tragedia di cui si parla non è (e non era mai) nè scritta nè adattata al teatro; ma non è però romantico il disegno, è piuttosto regolure—regolarissimo per l’unità del tempo, e mencando poco a quella del sito. Voi sapete bene se io aveva intenzione di farla rappresentare, poicheè era scritta al vostro fianco e nei momenti per certo più tragici per me come uomo che come autore,—perchè voi eravate in affanno ed in pericolo. Intanto sento dalla vostra Gazetta che sia nata una cabala, un partito, e senza ch’io vi abbia presa la minima parte. Si dice che l’autore ne fece la lettura!!!—qui forse? a Ravenna?—ed a chi? forse a Fletcher!!!—quel illustre litterato, &c. &c.’”

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writing; so that I write neither by day, nor by candle, nor torchlight, but by lightning light: the flashes are as brilliant as the most gaseous glow of the gas-light company. My chimney-board has just been thrown down by a gust of wind: I thought that it was the ‘Bold Thunder’ and ‘Brisk Lightning’ in person.—Three of us would be too many. There it goes—flash again! but

‘I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness; I never gave ye franks, nor call’d upon you:’

as I have done by and upon Mr. Elliston.

“Why do you not write? You should at least send me a line of particulars: I know nothing yet but by Galignani and the Honourable Douglas.

“Well, and how does our Pope controversy go on? and the pamphlet? It is impossible to write any news: the Austrian scoundrels rummage all letters.

“Since I wrote to you last week I have received English letters and papers, by which I perceive that what I took for an Italian truth is, after all, a French lie of the Gazette de France. It contains two ultra-falsehoods in as many lines. In the first place, Lord B. did not bring forward his play, but opposed the same; and, secondly, it was not condemned, but is continued to be acted, in despite of publisher, author, Lord Chancellor, and (for aught I know to the contrary) of audience, up to the first of May, at least—the latest date of my letters. You will oblige me, then, by causing Mr. Gazette of France to contradict himself,

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which, I suppose, he is used to. I never answer a foreign criticism; but this is a mere matter of fact, and not of opinions. I presume that you have English and French interest enough to do this for me—though, to be sure, as it is nothing but the truth which we wish to state, the insertion may be more difficult.

“You will oblige me very much by interfering to have the facts of the play-acting stated, as these scoundrels appear to be organizing a system of abuse against me, because I am in their ‘list.’ I care nothing for their criticism, but the matter of fact. I have written four acts of another tragedy, so you see they can’t bully me.

“You know, I suppose, that they actually keep a list of all individuals in Italy who dislike them—it must be numerous. Their suspicions and actual alarms, about my conduct and presumed intentions in the late row, were truly ludicrous—though not to bore you, I touched upon them lightly. They believed, and still believe here, or affect to believe it, that the whole plan and project of rising was settled by me, and the

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means furnished, &c. &c. All this was more fomented by the barbarian agents, who are numerous here (one of them was stabbed yesterday, by the way, but not dangerously):—and although when the Commandant was shot here before my door in December, I took him into my house, where he had every assistance, till he died on Fletcher’s bed; and although not one of them dared to receive him into their houses but myself, they leaving him to perish in the night in the streets, they put up a paper about three months ago, denouncing me as the Chief of the Liberals, and stirring up persons to assassinate me. But this shall never silence nor bully my opinions. All this came from the German Barbarians.”

“Since I wrote the enclosed a week ago, and for some weeks before, I have not had a line from you: now, I should be glad to know upon what principle of common or uncommon feeling, you leave me without any information but what I derive from garbled gazettes in English, and abusive ones in Italian (the Germans hating me, as a coal-heaver), while all this kick-up has been going on about the play? You shabby fellow!!! Were it not for two letters from Douglas Kinnaird, I should have been as ignorant as you are negligent.

“So, I hear Bowles has been abusing Hobhouse? if that’s the case, he has broken the truce, like Morillo’s successor, and I will cut him out, as Cochrane did the Esmeralda.

“Since I wrote the enclosed packet, I have completed (but not copied out) four acts of a new tragedy. When I have finished the fifth, I will copy it out. It is on the subject of ‘Sardanapalus,’ the last king of the Assyrians. The words Queen and Pavilion occur, but it is not an allusion to his Britannic Majesty, as you may tremulously imagine. This you will one day see (if I finish it), as I have made Sardanapalus brave (though voluptuous, as history represents him), and also as amiable as my poor

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powers could render him:—so that it could neither be truth nor satire on any living monarch. I have strictly preserved all the unities hitherto, and mean to continue them in the fifth, if possible; but not for the stage. Yours, in haste and hatred, you shabby correspondent!

“Since my last of the 26th or 25th, I have dashed off my fifth act of the tragedy called ‘Sardanapalus.’ But now comes the copying over, which may prove heavy work—heavy to the writer as to the reader. I have written to you at least six times sans answer, which proves you to be a—bookseller. I pray you to send me a copy of Mr. Wrangham’s reformation of ‘Langhorne’s Plutarch.’ I have the Greek, which is somewhat small of print, and the Italian, which is too heavy in style, and as false as a Neapolitan patriot proclamation. I pray you also to send me a Life, published some years ago, of the Magician Apollonius of Tyana. It is in English, and I think edited or written by what Martin Marprelate calls ‘a bouncing priest.’ I shall trouble you no farther with this sheet than with the postage. “Yours, &c.

“P.S. Since I wrote this, I determined to enclose it (as a half sheet) to Mr. Kinnaird, who will have the goodness to forward it. Besides, it saves sealing-wax.”

“You say you have written often: I have only received yours of the eleventh, which is very short. By this post, in five packets, I send you the tragedy of Sardanapalus, which is written in a rough hand:

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perhaps Mrs. Leigh can help you to decipher it. You will please t’ acknowledge it by return of post. You will remark that the unities are all strictly observed. The scene passes in the same hall always: the time, a summer’s night, about nine hours, or less, though it begins before sunset and ends after sunrise. In the third act, when Sardanapalus calls for a mirror to look at himself in his armour, recollect to quote the Latin passage from Juvenal upon Otho (a similar character, who did the same thing); Gifford will help you to it. The trait is perhaps too familiar, but it is historical (of Otho, at least), and natural in an effeminate character.”

“About Allegra—I will take some decisive step in the course of the year; at present, she is so happy where she is, that perhaps she had better have her alphabet imparted in her convent.

“What you say of the Dante is the first I have heard of it—all seeming to be merged in the row about the tragedy. Continue it!—Alas! what could Dante himself now prophesy about Italy? I am glad you like it, however, but doubt that you will be singular in your opinion. My new tragedy is completed.

“The B * * is right,—I ought to have mentioned her humour and amiability, but I thought at her sixty, beauty would be most agreeable or least likely. However, it shall be rectified in a new edition; and if any of the parties have either looks or qualities which they wish to be noticed, let me have a minute of them. I have no private nor personal dislike to Venice, rather the contrary, but I merely speak of what is the subject of all remarks and all writers upon her present state. Let me hear from you before you start. Believe me,

“P.S. Did you receive two letters of Douglas Kinnaird’s in an

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endorse from me? Remember me to Mengaldo, Soranzo, and all who care that I should remember them. The letter alluded to in the enclosed, ‘to the Cardinal,’ was in answer to some queries of the government, about a poor devil of a Neapolitan, arrested at Sinigaglia on suspicion, who came to beg of me here; being without breeches, and consequently without pockets for halfpence, I relieved and forwarded him to his country, and they arrested him at Pesaro on suspicion, and have since interrogated me (civilly and politely, however), about him. I sent them the poor man’s petition, and such information as I had about him, which, I trust, will get him out again, that is to say, if they give him a fair hearing.

“I am content with the article. Pray, did you receive, some posts ago, Moore’s lines, which I enclosed to you, written at Paris?”

You have not written lately, as is the usual custom with literary gentlemen, to console their friends with their observations in cases of magnitude. I do not know whether I sent you my ‘Elegy on the recovery of Lady * *:’—

“Behold the blessings of a lucky lot— My play is damn’d, and Lady * * not.

“The papers (and perhaps your letters) will have put you in possession of Muster Elliston’s dramatic behaviour. It is to be presumed that the play was fitted for the stage by Mr. Dibdin, who is the tailor upon such occasions, and will have taken measure with his usual accuracy. I hear that it is still continued to be performed—a piece of obstinacy for which it is some consolation to think that the discourteous histrio will be out of pocket.

“You will be surprised to hear that I have finished another tragedy in five acts, observing all the unities strictly. It is called ‘Sardanapalus,’ and was sent by last post to England. It is not for the stage, any more

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than the other was intended for it,—and I shall take better care this time that they don’t get hold on ’t.

“I have also sent, two months ago, a further letter on Bowles, &c.; but he seems to be so taken up with my ‘respect’ (as he calls it) towards him in the former case, that I am not sure that it will be published, being somewhat too full of ‘pastime and prodigality.’ I learn from some private letters of Bowles’s, that you were ‘the gentleman in asterisks.’ Who would have dreamed it? you see what mischief that clergyman has done by printing notes without names. How the deuce was I to suppose that the first four asterisks meant ‘Campbell’ and not ‘Pope,’ and that the blank signature meant Thomas Moore. You see

* In their eagerness, like true controversialists, to avail themselves of every passing advantage, and convert even straws into weapons on an emergency, my two friends, during their short warfare, contrived to place me in that sort of embarrassing position, the most provoking feature of which is, that it excites more amusement than sympathy. On the one side, Mr. Bowles chose to cite, as a support to his argument, a short fragment of a note, addressed to him, as he stated, by “a gentleman of the highest literary, &c. &c.,’ and saying, in reference to Mr. Bowles’s former pamphlet, “You have hit the right nail on the head, and * * * * too.” This short scrap was signed with four asterisks; and when, on the appearance of Mr. Bowles’s Letter, I met with it in his pages, not the slightest suspicion ever crossed my mind that I had been myself the writer of it;—my communications with my reverend friend and neighbour having been (for years, I am proud to say) sufficiently frequent to allow of such a hasty compliment to his disputative powers passing from my memory. When Lord Byron took the field against Mr. Bowles’s Letter, this unlucky scrap, so authoritatively brought forward, was, of course, too tempting a mark for his facetiousness to be resisted; more especially as the person mentioned in it, as having suffered from the reverend critic’s vigour, appeared, from the number of asterisks employed in designating him, to have been Pope himself, though, in reality, the name was that of Mr. Bowles’s former antagonist, Mr. Campbell. The noble assailant, it is needless to say, made the most of this vulnerable point; and few readers could have been more diverted than I was with his happy ridicule of “the gentleman in asterisks,” little thinking that I was myself, all the while, this veiled victim,—nor was it till about the time of the receipt of the above letter, that, by some communication on the subject from a friend in England, I was startled into the recollection of my own share in the transaction. While by one friend I was thus unconsciously, if not innocently, drawn into the scrape, the other was not slow in rendering me the same friendly service;—for, on the appearance of Lord Byron’s answer to Mr. Bowles, I had the mortification of finding that, with a far less pardonable want of reserve, he had all but named me as his authority for an anecdote of his reverend opponent’s early days, which I had, in the course of an after-dinner conversation, told him at Venice, and which,—pleasant in itself, and, whether true or false, harmless,—derived its sole sting from the manner in which the noble disputant triumphantly applied it. Such are the consequences of one’s near and dear friends taking to controversy.

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what comes of being familiar with parsons. His answers have not yet reached me, but I understand from Hobhouse, that he (H.) is attacked in them. If that be the case, Bowles has broken the truce (which he himself proclaimed, by the way), and I must have at him again.

“I forgot to ask you, if you had seen your own panegyric in the

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correspondence of Mrs. Waterhouse and Colonel Berkeley? To be sure, their moral is not quite exact; but your passion is fully effective; and all poetry of the Asiatic kind—I mean Asiatic, as the Romans called ‘Asiatic oratory,’ and not because the scenery is Oriental—must be tried by that test only. I am not quite sure that I shall allow the Miss Byrons (legitimate or illegitimate) to read Lalla Rookh—in the first place, on account of this said passion; and, in the second, that they mayn’t discover that there was a better poet than papa.

“You say nothing of politics—but, alas! what can be said?

The world is a bundle of hay, Mankind are the asses who pull, Each tugs it a different way,— And the greatest of all is John Bull!

“How do you call your new project? I have sent to Murray a new tragedy, ycleped ‘Sardanapalus,’ writ according to Aristotle—all, save the chorus—I could not reconcile me to that. I have begun another, and am in the second act;—so you see I saunter on as usual.

“Bowles’s answers have reached me; but I can’t go on disputing for ever,—particularly in a polite manner. I suppose he will take being silent for silenced. He has been so civil that I can’t find it in my liver to be facetious with him,—else I had a savage joke or two at his service.

“I can’t send you the little journal, because it is in boards, and I can’t trust it per post. Don’t suppose it is any thing particular; but it will show the intentions of the natives at that time—and one or two other things, chiefly personal, like the former one.

“So, Longman don’t bite.—It was my wish to have made that work of use. Could you not raise a sum upon it (however small), reserving the power of redeeming it on repayment?

“Are you in Paris, or a villaging? If you are in the city, you will never resist the Anglo-invasion you speak of. I do not see an Englishman in half a year; and, when I do I turn my horse’s head the other way; The fact, which you will find in the last note to the Doge, has given me a good excuse for quite dropping the least connexion with travellers.

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“I do not recollect the speech you speak of, but suspect it is not the Doge’s but one of Israel Bertuccio to Calendaro. I hope you think that Elliston behaved shamefully—it is my only consolation. I made the Milanese fellows contradict their lie, which they did with the grace of people used to it.

“Yours, &c.

“B.”

LETTER CCCCXXXVI.

TO MR. MOORE.

“Ravenna, July 5th, 1921.

“How could you suppose that I ever would allow any thing that could be said on your account to weigh with me? I only regret that Bowles had not said that you were the writer of that note until afterwards, when out he comes with it, in a private letter to Murray, which Murray sends to me. D—n the controversy!

“D—n Twizzle, D—n the bell, And d—n the fool who rung it—Well! From all such plagues I’ll quickly be deliver’d.

“I have had a friend of your Mr. Irving’s—a very pretty lad—a Mr. Coolidge, of Boston—only somewhat too full of poesy and ‘entusymusy.’ I was very civil to him during his few hours’ stay, and talked with him much of Irving, whose writings are my delight. But I suspect that he did not take quite so much to me, from his having expected to meet a misanthropical gentleman, in wolf-skin breeches, and answering in fierce monosyllables, instead of a man of this world. I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?

“I have had a curious letter to-day from a girl in England (I never saw her), who says she is given over of a decline, but could not go out of the world without thanking me for the delight which my poesy for

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several years, &c. &c. &c. It is signed simply N. N. A. and has not a word of ‘cant’ or preachment in it upon any opinions. She merely says that she is dying, and that as I had contributed so highly to her existing pleasure, she thought that she might say so, begging me to burn her letter—which, by the way, I can not do, as I look upon such a letter, in such circumstances, as better than a diploma from Gottingen. I once had a letter from Drontheim, in Norway (but not from a dying woman), in verse, on the same score of gratulation. These are the things which make one at times believe oneself a poet. But if I must believe that * * * * *, and such fellows, are poets also, it is better to be out of the corps.

“I am now in the fifth act of ‘Foscari,’ being the third tragedy in twelve months, besides proses; so you perceive that I am not at all idle. And are you, too, busy? I doubt that your life at Paris draws too much upon your time, which is a pity. Can’t you divide your day, so as to combine both? I have had plenty of all sorts of worldly business on my hands last year,—and yet it is not so difficult to give a few hours to the Muses. This sentence is so like * * * * that— “Ever, &c.

“If we were together, I should publish both my plays (periodically) in our joint journal. It should be our plan to publish all our best things in that way.”

In the Journal entitled “Detached Thoughts,” I find the tribute to his genius which he here mentions, as well as some others, thus interestingly dwelt upon.

“As far as fame goes (that is to say, living fame) I have had my share, perhaps—indeed, certainly—more than my deserts.

“Some odd instances have occurred, to my own experience, of the wild and strange places to which a name may penetrate, and where it may impress. Two years ago (almost three, being in August or July, 1819,) I received at Ravenna a letter, in English verse, from Drontheim in Norway, written by a Norwegian, and full of the usual compliments, &c. &c. It is still somewhere amongst my papers. In the same month

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I received an invitation into Holstein from a Mr. Jacobsen (I think) of Hamburgh: also, by the same medium, a translation of Medora’s song in the Corsair by a Westphalian baroness (not ‘Thunderton-Tronck’), with some original verses of hers (very pretty and Klopstock-ish), and a prose translation annexed to them, on the subject of my wife:—as they concerned her more than me, I sent them to her, together with Mr. Jacobsen’s letter. It was odd enough to receive an invitation to pass the summer in Holstein while in Italy, from people I never knew. The letter was addressed to Venice. Mr. Jacobsen talked to me of the ‘wild roses growing in the Holstein summer.’ Why then did the Cimbri and Teutones emigrate?

“What a strange thing is life and man! Were I to present myself at the door of the house where my daughter now is, the door would be shut in my face—unless (as is not impossible) I knocked down the porter; and if I had gone in that year (and perhaps now) to Drontheim (the furthest town in Norway), or into Holstein, I should have been received with open arms into the mansion of strangers and foreigners attached to me by no tie but by that of mind and rumour.

“As far as fame goes, I have had my share: it has indeed been leavened by other human contingencies, and this in a greater degree than has occurred to most literary men of a decent rank in life; but, on the whole, I take it that such equipoise is the condition of humanity.”

Of the visit, too, of the American gentleman, he thus speaks in the same Journal.

“A young American, named Coolidge, called on me not many months ago. He was intelligent, very handsome, and not more than twenty years old, according to appearances; a little romantic, but that sits well upon youth, and mighty fond of poesy, as may be suspected from his approaching me in my cavern. He brought me a message from an old servant of my family (Joe Murray) and told me that he (Mr. Coolidge) had obtained a copy of my bust from Thorwaldsen at Rome, to send to America. I confess I was more flattered by this young enthusiasm of a solitary Trans-Atlantic traveller, than if they had decreed me a statue in the Paris Pantheon (I have seen emperors and demagogues cast down from their pedestals even in my own time, and

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Grattan’s name razed from the street, called after him in Dublin); I say that I was more flattered by it, because it was single, unpolitical, and was without motive or ostentation,—the pure and warm feeling of a boy for the poet he admired. It must have been expensive, though;—I would not pay the price of a Thorwaldsen bust for any human head and shoulders, except Napoleon’s, or my children’s, or some ‘absurd woman-kinds,’ as Monkbarns calls them,—or my sister’s. If asked why, then, I sate for my own?—Answer, that it was at the particular request of J. C. Hobhouse, Esq., and for no one else. A picture is a different matter;—every body sits for their picture;—but a bust looks like putting up pretensions to permanency, and smacks something of a hankering for public fame rather than private remembrance.

“Whenever an American requests to see me (which is not unfrequently) I comply, firstly, because I respect a people who acquired their freedom by their firmness without excess; and, secondly, because these Trans-Atlantic visits, ‘few and far between,’ make me feel as if talking with posterity from the other side of the Styx. In a century or two the new English and Spanish Atlantides will be masters of the old countries, in all probability, as Greece and Europe overcame their mother Asia in the older or earlier ages, as they are called.”

LETTER CCCCXXXVII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Ravenna, July 6th, 1821.

“In agreement with a wish expressed by Mr. Hobhouse, it is my determination to omit the stanza upon the horse of Semiramis in the Fifth Canto of Don Juan. I mention this, in case you are, or intend to be, the publisher of the remaining Cantos.

“At the particular request of the Contessa G. I have promised not to continue Don Juan. You will therefore look upon these three Cantos as the last of the poem. She had read the two first in the French translation, and never ceased beseeching me to write no more of it. The reason of this is not at first obvious to a superficial observer of foreign manners; but it arises from the wish of all women to exalt the sentiment

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of the passions, and to keep up the illusion which is their empire. Now Don Juan strips off this illusion, and laughs at that and most other things. I never knew a woman who did not protect Rousseau, nor one who did not dislike De Grammont, Gil Blas, and all the comedy, of the passions, when brought out naturally. But ‘king’s blood must keep word,’ as Serjeant Bothwell says.”

LETTER CCCCXXXVIII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“July 14th, 1821.

“I trust that Sardanapalus will not be mistaken for a political play, which was so far from my intention, that I thought of nothing but Asiatic history. The Venetian play, too, is rigidly historical. My object has been to dramatise, like the Greeks (a modest phrase), striking passages of history, as they did of history and mythology. You will find all this very unlike Shakspeare; and so much the better in one sense, for I look upon him to be the worst of models*, though the most extraordinary of writers. It has been my object to be as simple and severe as Alfieri, and I have broken down the poetry as nearly as I could to common language. The hardship is, that in these times one can neither speak of kings or queens without suspicion of politics or personalities. I intended neither.

“I am not very well. and I write in the midst of unpleasant scenes here: they have, without trial or process, banished several of the first inhabitants of the cities—here and all around the Roman states—amongst them many of my personal friends, so that every thing is in confusion

* In venturing this judgment upon Shakspeare, Lord Byron but followed In the footsteps of his great idol Pope. “It was mighty simple in Rowe,” says this poet, “to write a play now professedly in Shakspeare’s style, that is, professedly in the style of a bed age.”—Spence, sect. 4. 1734-36. Of Milton, too, Pope seems to have held pretty nearly the same opinion as that professed by Lord Byron in some of these letters. See, in Spence, sect. 5. 1737-39, a passage on which his editor remarks—“Perhaps Pope did not relish Shakspeare more than he seems to have done Milton.”

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and grief: it is a kind of thing which cannot be described without an equal pain as in beholding it.

“You are very niggardly in your letters.

“Yours truly,

“B.”

LETTER CCCCXXXIX.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Ravenna, July 22d, 1821.

The printer has done wonders;—he has read what I cannot—my own handwriting.

“I oppose the ‘delay till winter:’ I am particularly anxious to print while the winter theatres are closed, to gain time, in case they try their former piece of politeness. Any loss shall be considered in our contract, whether occasioned by the season or other causes; but print away, and publish.

“I think they must own that I have more styles than one. ‘Sardanapalus’ is, however, almost a comic character: but, for that matter, so is Richard the Third. Mind the unities, which are my great object of research. I am glad that Gifford likes it: as for ‘the million,’ you see I have carefully consulted any thing but the taste of the day for extravagant ‘coups de theatre.’ Any probable loss, as I said before, will be allowed for in our accompts. The reviews (except one or two, Blackwood’s, for instance) are cold enough; but never mind those fellows: I shall send them to the right about, if I take it into my head. I always found the English baser in some things than any other nation. You stare, but it’s true as to gratitude,—perhaps, because they are prouder, and proud people hate obligations.

“The tyranny of the Government here is breaking out. They have exiled about a thousand people of the best families all over the Roman states. As many of my friends are amongst them, I think of moving too, but not till I have had your answers. Continue your address to me here, as usual, and quickly. What you will not be sorry

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to hear is, that the poor of the place, hearing that I meant to go, got together a petition to the Cardinal to request that he would request me to remain. I only heard of it a day or two ago, and it is no dishonour to them nor to me; but it will have displeased the higher powers, who look upon me as a Chief of the Coalheavers. They arrested a servant of mine for a street quarrel with an officer (they drew upon one another knives and pistols), but as the officer was out of uniform, and in the wrong besides, on my protesting stoutly, he was released. I was not present at the affray, which happened by night near my stables. My man (an Italian), a very stout, and not over-patient personage, would have taken a fatal revenge afterwards, if I had not prevented him. As it was, he drew his stiletto, and, but for passengers, would have carbonadoed the captain, who, I understand, made but a poor figure in the quarrel, except by beginning it. He applied to me, and I offered him any satisfaction, either by turning away the man, or otherwise, because he had drawn a knife. He answered that a reproof would be sufficient. I reproved him; and yet, after this, the shabby dog complained to the Government,—after being quite satisfied, as he said. This roused me, and I gave them a remonstrance which had some effect. The captain has been reprimanded, the servant released, and the business at present rests there.”

Among the victims of the “black sentence and proscription” by which the rulers of Italy were now, as appears from the above letters, avenging their late alarm upon all who had even in the remotest degree contributed to it, the two Gambas were, of course, as suspected Chiefs of the Carbonari of Romagna, included. About the middle of July, Madame Guiccioli, in a state of despair, wrote to inform Lord Byron that her father, in whose palazzo she was at that time residing, had just been ordered to quit Ravenna within twenty-four hours, and that it was the intention of her brother to depart the following morning. The young Count, however, was not permitted to remain even so long, being arrested that very night, and conveyed by soldiers to the frontier; and the Contessa herself, in but a few days after, found that she also

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must join the crowd of exiles. The prospect of being again separated from her noble lover seems to have rendered banishment little less fearful, in her eyes, than death. ‘This alone’ she says in a letter to him, ‘was wanting to fill up the measure of my despair. Help me, my love, for I am in a situation most terrible, and without you, I can resolve upon nothing. * * has just been with me, having been sent by * * to tell me that I must depart from Ravenna before next Tuesday, as my husband has had recourse to Rome, for the purpose of either forcing me to return to him, or else putting me in a convent; and the answer from thence is expected in a few days. I must not speak of this to any one,—I must escape by night; for, if my project should be discovered, it will be impeded, and my passport (which the goodness of Heaven has permitted me, I know not how, to obtain) will be taken from me. Byron! I am in despair!—If I must leave you here without knowing when I shall see you again, if it is your will that I should suffer so cruelly, I am resolved to remain. They may put me in a convent; I shall die,—but—but then you cannot aid me, and I cannot reproach you. I know not what they tell me, for my agitation overwhelms me;—and why? Not because I fear my present danger, but solely, I call Heaven to witness, solely because I must leave you.’

Towards the latter end of July, the writer of this tender and truly feminine letter found herself forced to leave Ravenna,—the home of her youth, as it was, now, of her heart,—uncertain whither to go, or where she should again meet her lover. After lingering for a short time at Bologna, under a faint expectation that the Court of Rome might yet, through some friendly mediation*, be induced to rescind its order against her relatives, she at length gave up all hope, and joined her father and brother at Florence.

It has been already seen, from Lord Byron’s letters, that he had himself become an object of strong suspicion to the Government, and

* Among the persons applied to by Lord Byron for their interest on this occasion was the late Duchess of Devonshire, whose answer, dated from Spa, I find among his papers. With the utmost readiness her Grace undertakes to write to Rome on the subject, and adds, “Believe me also, my Lord, that there is a character of justice, goodness end benevolence in the present Government of Rome, which, if they are convinced of the just claims of the Comte de Gamba and his son, will make them grant their request.”

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it was, indeed, chiefly in their desire to rid themselves of his presence, that the steps taken against the Gamba family had originated;—the constant benevolence which he exercised towards the poor of Ravenna being likely, it was feared, to render him dangerously popular among a people unused to charity on so enlarged a scale. “One of the principal causes,” says Madame Guiccioli, “of the exile of my relatives, was in reality the idea that Lord Byron would share the banishment of his friends. Already the Government were averse to Lord Byron’s residence at Ravenna; knowing his opinions, fearing his influence, and also exaggerating the extent of his means for giving effect to them. They fancied that he provided money for the purchase of arms, &c., and that he contributed pecuniarily to the wants of the Society. The truth is, that, when called upon to exercise his beneficence, he made no inquiries as to the political and religious opinions of those who required his aid. Every unhappy and needy object had an equal share in his benevolence. The Anti-Liberals, however, insisted upon believing that he was the principal support of Liberalism in Romagna, and were desirous of his departure; but, not daring to exact it by any direct measure, they were in hopes of being able indirectly to force him into this step*.”

After stating the particulars of her own hasty departure, the lady proceeds:—“Lord Byron, in the mean time, remained at Ravenna, in a town convulsed by party spirit, where he had certainly, on account of his opinions, many fanatical and perfidious enemies; and my imagination always painted him surrounded by a thousand dangers. It may be conceived, therefore, what that journey must have been to me, and what I suffered at such a distance from him. His letters would have given

* “Una delle principali ragioni per cui si erano esigliati i miei parenti era in eperanza che Lord Byron pure lascierebbe la Romagna quando i suoi amici fossero partiti. Già da qualche tempo la permanenza di Lord Byron in Ravenna era mal gradita dal Governo conoscendosile sue opinione e temendosila sua influenza, ed essaggiandosi anche i suoi mezzi per esercitarla. Si credeva che egli somministrasse danare per provvedere armi, e che provvedesse ai bisogni della Società. La verità era the nello spargare le sue beneficenze egli non s’informava delle opinioni politiche e religiose di quello che aveva bisogno del suo soccorso; ogni misero ed ogni infelice aveva un eguale diviso alla sua generosità. Ma in ogni modo gli Anti-Libarali lo credevano il principale eostegno del Liberalismo della Romagna, e desideravano la sua partenza; ma non osando provocarla in nessun modo diretto speravano di ottenerla indirettamente.”

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me comfort; but two days always elapsed between his writing and my receiving them; and this idea embittered all the solace they would otherwise have afforded me, so that my heart was torn by the most cruel fears. Yet it was necessary for his own sake that he should remain some time longer at Ravenna, in order that it might not be said that he also was banished. Besides, he had conceived a very great affection for the place itself; and was desirous, before he left it of exhausting every means and hope of procuring the recall of my relations from banishment*.”

LETTER CCCCXL.

TO MR. HOPPNER.

“Ravenna, July 23d, 1821.

“This country being in a state of proscription, and all my friends exiled or arrested—the whole family of Gamba obliged to go to Florence for the present—the father and son for politics—(and the Guiccioli, because menaced with a convent, as her father is not here), I have determined to remove to Switzerland, and they also. Indeed, my, life here is not supposed to be particularly safe—but that has been the case for this twelvemonth past, and is therefore not the primary consideration.

“I have written by this post to Mr. Hentsch, junior, the banker of Geneva, to provide (if possible) a house for me, and another for Gamba’s family (the father, son, and daughter), on the Jura side of the lake of Geneva, furnished, and with stabling (for me at least) for eight horses. I shall bring Allegra with me. Could you assist me or Hentsch in his

* “Lord Byron restava frattanto a Ravenna in un paese sconvolso dai partiti, e dove aveva certamente dei nemici di opinioni fanatici e perfidi, e la mia immaginazione me lo dipingeva circondato sempre da mille pericoli. Si può dunque pensare cosa dovesse essere qual viaggio per me e cosa io dovessi soffrire nella sua lontananza. La sue lettere avrebbero potuto essermi di conforto; ma quando io le riceveva an già trascorso lo spazio di due giorni dal memento in cui furono scritte, e questo pensiero distruggeva tutto il bene che esse potevano farmi, e la mia anima era lacerata dai più crudeli timori. Frattanto era necessario per la di lui convenienza che egli restasse ancora qualche tempo in Ravenna affinchè non avesse a dirsi che egli pure ne era caigliato; ed oltreciò egli si era sommamente affezianto a qual soggiorno e voleva innansi di partire vedere esausiti tutti i tentativi e tutte le speranze del ritorno dei miei parenti.”

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researches? The Gambas are at Florence, but have authorized me to treat for them. You know, or do not know, that they are great patriots—and both—but the son in particular—very fine fellows. This I know, for I have seen them lately in very awkward situations—not pecuniary, but personal—and they behaved like heroes, neither yielding nor retracting.

“You have no idea what a state of oppression this country is in—they arrested above a thousand of high and low throughout Romagna—banished some and confined others, without trial, process, or even accusation!! Every body says they would have done the same by me if they dared proceed openly. My motive, however, for remaining, is because every one of my acquaintance, to the amount of hundreds almost, have been exiled.

“Will you do what you can in looking out for a couple of houses furnished, and conferring with Hentsch for us? We care nothing about society, and are only anxious for a temporary and tranquil asylum and individual freedom.

“Believe me, &c.

“P.S. Can you give me an idea of the comparative expenses of Switzerland and Italy? which I have forgotten. I speak merely of those of decent living, horses, &c. and not of luxuries or high living. Do not, however, decide any thing positively till I have your answer, as I can then know how to think upon these topics of transmigration, &c. &c. &c.”

LETTER CCCCXLI.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Ravenna, July 30th, 1821.

“Enclosed is the best account of the Doge Faliero, which was only sent to me from an old MS. the other day. Get it translated, and append it as a note to the next edition. You will perhaps be pleased to see that my conceptions of his character were correct, though I regret not having met with this extract before. You will perceive that he himself said exactly what he is made to say about the Bishop of Treviso. You will see also that ‘he spoke very little, and those only words of rage and

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disdain,’ after his arrest, which is the case in the play, except when he breaks out at the close of Act Fifth. But his speech to the conspirators is better in the MS. than in the play. I wish that I had met with it in time. Do not forget this note, with a translation.

“In a former note to the Juans, speaking of Voltaire, I have quoted his famous ‘Zaire, tu pleures,’ which is an error; it should be ‘Zaire, vous pleurez.’ Recollect this.

“I am so busy here about those poor proscribed exiles, who are scattered about, and with trying to get some of them recalled, that I have hardly time or patience to write a short preface, which will be proper for the two plays. However, I will make it out on receiving the next proofs.

“Yours ever, &c.

“P.S. Please to append the letter about the Hellespont as a note to your next opportunity of the verses on Leander, &c. &c. &c. in Childe Harold. Don’t forget it amidst your multitudinous avocations, which I think of celebrating in a Dithyrambic Ode to Albemarle-street.

“Are you aware that Shelley has written an Elegy on Keats, and accuses the Quarterly of killing him?

‘Who kill’d John Keats?’ ‘I,’ says the Quarterly, So savage and Tartarly; ‘’Twas one of my feats.’ ‘Who shot the arrow? ‘The poet-priest Milman, (So ready to kill man), Or Southey or Barrow.’

“You know very well that I did not approve of Keats’s poetry, or principles of poetry, or of his abuse of Pope; but, as he is dead, omit all that is said about him in any MSS. of mine, or publication. His Hyperion is a fine monument, and will keep his name. I do not envy the man who wrote the article;—you Review-people have no more right to kill than any other footpads. However, he who would die of an article in a Review would probably have died of something else equally trivial. The same thing nearly happened to Kirke White, who died afterwards of a consumption”

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LIFE OF LORD BYRON.

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LETTER CCCCXLII.

TO MR. MOORE.

“Ravenna, August 2d, 1821.

“I had certainly answered your last letter, though but briefly, to the part to which you refer, merely saying, ‘damn the controversy;’ and quoting some verses of George Colman’s, not as allusive to you, but to the disputants. Did you receive this letter? It imports me to know that our letters are not intercepted or mislaid.

“Your Berlin drama* is an honour, unknown since the days of Elkanah Settle, whose ‘Emperor of Morocco’ was represented by the Court ladies, which was, as Johnson says, ‘the last blast of inflammation’ to poor Dryden, who could not bear it, and fell foul of Settle without mercy or moderation, on account of that and a frontispiece, which he dared to put before his play.

“Was not your showing the Memoranda to * * somewhat perilous? Is there not a facetious allusion or two which might as well be reserved for posterity?

“I know S * * well—that is to say, I have met him occasionally at Copet. Is he not also touched lightly in the Memoranda? In a review of Childe Harold, Canto 4th, three years ago, in Blackwood’s Magazine, they quote some stanzas of an elegy of S * *’s on Rome, from which they say that I might have taken some ideas. I give you my honour that I never saw it except in that criticism, which gives, I think, three or four stanzas, sent them (they say) for the nonce by a correspondent—perhaps himself. The fact is easily proved; for I don’t understand German, and there was I believe no translation—at least, it was the first time that I ever heard of, or saw, either translation or original.

“I remember having some talk with S * * about Alfieri, whose merit he denies. He was also wroth about the Edinburgh Review of

* There had been, a short time before, performed at the Court of Berlin a spectacle founded on the Poem of Lalla Rookh, in which the present Emperor of Russia personated Feramorz, and the Empress, Lalla Rookh.

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Goëthe, which was sharp enough, to be sure. He went about saying, too, of the French—‘I meditate a terrible vengeance against the French—I will prove that Moliere is no poet†.’ * * *

“I don’t see why you should talk of ‘declining.’ When I saw you, you looked thinner, and yet younger, than you did when we parted several years before. You may rely upon this as fact. If it were not, I should say nothing, for I would rather not say unpleasant personal things to any one—but, as it was the pleasant truth, I tell it you. If you had led my life, indeed, changing climates and connexions—thinning yourself with fasting and purgatives—besides the wear and tear of the vulture passions, and a very bad temper besides, you might talk in this way—but you! I know no man who looks so well for his years, or who deserves to look better and to be better, in all respects. You are a * * *, and, what is perhaps better for your friends a good fellow. So, don’t talk of decay, but put in for eighty, as you well may.

“I am, at present, occupied principally about these unhappy proscriptions and exiles, which have taken place here on account of politics. It has been a miserable sight to see the general desolation in families. I am doing what I can for them, high and low, by such interest and means as I possess or can bring to bear. There have been thousands of these proscriptions within the last month in the Exarchate, or (to speak modernly) the Legations. Yesterday, too, a man got his back broken, in extricating a dog of mine from under a mill-wheel. The dog was killed, and the man is in the greatest danger. I was not present—it happened before I was up, owing to a stupid boy taking the dog to bathe in a dangerous spot. I must, of course, provide for the poor fellow while he lives, and his family, if he dies. I would gladly have given a much greater sum than that will come to that he had never been hurt. Pray, let me hear from you, and excuse haste and hot weather.

“Yours, &c.

* * * * * *

“You may have probably seen all sorts of attacks upon me in some gazettes in England some months ago. I only saw them, by Murray’s

† This threat has been since acted upon,—the critic in question having, to the great horror of the French literati, pronounced Moliere to be a “farceur.”

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bounty, the other day. They call me ‘Plagiary,’ and what not. I think I now, in my time, have been accused of every thing.

“I have not given you details of little events here; but they have been trying to make me out to be the chief of a conspiracy, and nothing but their want of proofs for an English investigation has stopped them. Had it been a poor native, the suspicion were enough, as it has been for hundreds.

“Why don’t you write on Napoleon? I have no spirits, nor ‘estro’ to do so. His overthrow, from the beginning, was a blow on the head to me. Since that period, we have been the slaves of fools. Excuse this long letter. Ecco a translation literal of a French epigram.

“Egle, beauty and poet, has two little crimes, She makes her own face, and does not make her rhymes.

“I am going to ride, having been warned not to ride in a particular part of the forest, on account of the ultra-politicians.

“Is there no chance of your return to England, and of our Journal? I would have published the two plays in it—two or three scenes per number—and, indeed, all of mine in it. If you went to England, I would do so still.”

About this time Mr. Shelley, who had now fixed his residence at Pisa, received a letter from Lord Byron, earnestly requesting to see him, in consequence of which he immediately set out for Ravenna; and the following extracts from letters, written during his stay with his noble friend, will be read with that double feeling of interest which is always sure to be excited in hearing one man of genius express his opinions of another.

“Ravenna, August 7th, 1821.

“I arrived last night at ten o’clock, and sat up talking with Lord Byron until five this morning: I then went to sleep, and now awake at eleven; and having despatched my breakfast as quick as possible, mean to devote the interval until twelve, when the post departs, to you.

“Lord Byron is very well, and was delighted to see me. He has

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in fact completely recovered his health, and lives a life totally the reverse of that which he led at Venice. He has a permanent sort of liaison with the Contessa Guiccioli, who is now at Florence, and seems from her letters to be a very amiable woman. She is waiting there until something shall be decided as to their emigration to Switzerland or stay in Italy, which is yet undetermined on either side. She was compelled to escape from the Papal territory in great haste, as measures had already been taken to place her in a convent, where she would have been unrelentingly confined for life. The oppression of the marriage contract, as existing in the laws and opinions of Italy, though less frequently exercised, is far severer than that of England.

“Lord Byron had almost destroyed himself at Venice. His state of debility was such that he was unable to digest any food; he was consumed by hectic fever, and would speedily have perished but for this attachment, which reclaimed him from the excesses into which he threw himself, from carelessness and pride, rather than taste. Poor fellow! he is now quite well, and immersed in politics and literature. He has given me a number of the most interesting details on the former subject; but we will not speak of them in a letter. Fletcher is here, and—as if, like a shadow, he waxed and waned with the substance of his master—has also revived his good looks, and. from amidst the unseasonable gray hairs a fresh harvest of flaxen locks has put forth.

“We talked a great deal of poetry and such matters last night; and, as usual, differed—and, I think, more than ever. He affects to patronise a system of criticism fit only for the production of mediocrity; and although all his finer poems and passages have been produced in defiance of this system, yet I recognise the pernicious effects of it in the Doge of Venice; and it will cramp and limit his future efforts, however great they may be, unless he gets rid of it. I have read only parts of it, or rather he himself read them to me, and gave me the plan of the whole.

“Ravenna, August 15th, 1821.

“We ride out in the evening through the pine forests which divide the city from the sea. Our way of life is this, and I have accommodated myself to it without much difficulty:—Lord Byron gets up at two—

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breakfasts—we talk, read, &c. until six—then we ride at eight, and after dinner sit talking until four or five in the morning. I get up at twelve, and am now devoting the interval between my rising and his to you.

“Lord Byron is greatly improved in every respect—in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health and happiness. His connexion with La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He lives in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now about four thousand a year, one thousand of which he devotes to purposes of charity. He has had mischievous passions, but these he seems to have subdued; and he is becoming, what he should be, a virtuous man. The interest which he took in the politics of Italy, and the actions he performed in consequence of it, are subjects not fit to be written, but are such as will delight and surprise you.

“He is not yet decided to go to Switzerland, a place, indeed, little fitted for him: the gossip and the cabals of those Anglicised coteries would torment him as they did before, and might exasperate him into a relapse of libertinism, which, he says, he plunged into not from taste, but from despair. La Guiccioli and her brother (who is Lord Byron’s friend and confidant, and acquiesces perfectly in her connexion with him) wish to go to Switzerland, as Lord Byron says, merely from the novelty and pleasure of travelling. Lord Byron prefers Tuscany or Lucca, and is trying to persuade them to adopt his views. He has made we write a long letter to her to engage her to remain. An odd thing enough for an utter stranger to write on subjects of the utmost delicacy to his friend’s mistress—but it seems destined that I am always to have some active part in every body’s affairs whom I approach. I have set down, in tame Italian, the strongest reasons I can think of against the Swiss emigration. To tell you the truth, I should be very glad to accept as my fee his establishment in Tuscany. Ravenna is a miserable place: the people are barbarous and wild, and their language the most infernal patois that you can imagine. He would be in every respect better among the Tuscans.

“He has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan, which is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far above all the poets of the day. Every word has the stamp of immortality. This canto is in a style (but totally free from indelicacy, and sustained

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with incredible ease and power) like the end of the second canto: there is not a word which the most rigid assertor of the dignity of human nature could desire to be cancelled: it fulfils, in a certain degree, what I have long preached,—of producing something wholly new, and relative to the age, and yet surpassingly beautiful. It may be vanity, but I think I see the trace of my earnest exhortations to him, to create something wholly new.

* * * * * *

“I am sure, if I asked, it would not be refused; yet there is something in me that makes it impossible. Lord Byron and I are excellent friends; and were I reduced to poverty, or were I a writer who had no claim to a higher station than I possess, or did I possess a higher than I deserve, we should appear in all things as such, and I would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the case: the demon of mistrust and of pride lurks between two persons in our situation, poisoning the freedom of our intercourse. This is a tax, and a heavy one, which we must pay for being human. I think the fault is not on my side; nor is it likely,—I being the weaker. I hope that in the next world these things will be better managed. What is passing in the heart of another, rarely escapes the observation of one who is a strict anatomist of his own.

* * * * * *

“Lord Byron here has splendid apartments in the palace of his mistress’s husband, who is one of the richest men in Italy. She is divorced, with an allowance of twelve thousand crowns a year;—a miserable pittance from a man who has a hundred and twenty thousand a year. There are two monkeys, five cats, eight dogs, and ten horses, all of whom (except the horses) walk about the house like the masters of it. Tita, the Venetian, is here, and operates as my valet—a fine fellow, with a prodigious black beard, who has stabbed two or three people, and is the most good-natured-looking fellow I ever saw.

“Wednesday. Ravenna.

“I told you I had written, by Lord Byron’s desire, to La Guiccioli, to dissuade her and her family from Switzerland. Her answer is this moment arrived, and my representation seems to have reconciled them

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to the unfitness of the step. At the conclusion of a letter, full of all the fine things she says she has heard of me, is this request, which I transcribe:—‘Signore, la vostra bontà mi fa ardita di chiedervi un favore, me lo accorderete voi? Non partite da Ravenna senza Milord.’ Of course, being now, by all the laws of knighthood, captive to a lady’s request, I shall only be at liberty on my parole until Lord Byron is settled at Pisa. I shall reply, of course, that the boon is granted, and that if her lover is reluctant to quit Ravenna after I have made arrangements for receiving him at Pisa, I am bound to place myself in the same situation as now, to assail him with importunities to rejoin her. Of this there is fortunately no need: and I need not tell you that there is no fear that this chivalric submission of mine to the great general laws of antique courtesy, against which I never rebel, and which is my religion, should interfere with my soon returning, and long remaining with you, dear girl.

* * * * * * *

“We ride out every evening as usual, and practise pistol-shooting at a pumpkin, and I am not sorry to observe that I approach towards my noble friend’s exactness of aim. I have the greatest trouble to get away, and Lord Byron, as a reason for my stay, has urged, that without either me or the Guiccioli, he will certainly fall into his old habits. I then talk, and he listens to reason: and I earnestly hope that he is too well aware of the terrible and degrading consequences of his former mode of life, to be in danger from the short interval of temptation that will be left him.”

LETTER CCCCXLIII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Ravenna, August 10th, 1821.

“Your conduct to Mr. Moore is certainly very handsome; and I would not say so if I could help it, for you are not at present by any means in my good graces.

“With regard to additions, &c. there is a Journal which I kept in 1814 which you may ask him for; also a Journal, which you must get

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from Mrs. Leigh, of my journey in the Alps, which contains all the germs of Manfred. I have also kept a small Diary here for a few months last winter, which I would send you, and any continuation. You would find easy access to all my papers and letters, and do not neglect this (in case of accidents), on account of the mass of confusion in which they are; for out of that chaos of papers you will find some curious ones of mine and others, if not lost or destroyed. If circumstances, however (which is almost impossible), made me ever consent to a publication in my lifetime, you would in that case, I suppose, make Moore some advance, in proportion to the likelihood or non-likelihood of success. You are both sure to survive me, however.

“You must also have from Mr. Moore the correspondence between me and Lady B., to whom I offered the sight of all which regards herself in these papers. This is important. He has her letter, and a copy of my answer. I would rather Moore edited me than another.

“I sent you Valpy’s letter to decide for yourself, and Stockdale’s to amuse you. I am always loyal with you, as I was in Galignani’s affair, and you with me—now and then.

“I return you Moore’s letter, which is very creditable to him, and you, and me.

“Yours ever.”

LETTER CCCCXLIV.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Ravenna, August 16th, 1821.

“I regret that Holmes can’t or won’t come: it is rather shabby, as I was always very civil and punctual with him. But he is but one * * more. One meets with none else among the English.

“I wait the proofs of the MSS. with proper impatience.

“So you have published, or mean to publish, the new Juans? Ar’n’t you afraid of the Constitutional Assassination of Bridge-street? When first I saw the name of Murray, I thought it had been yours; but was solaced by seeing that your synonyme is an attorneo, and that you are not one of that atrocious crew.

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“I am in a great discomfort about the probable war, and with my trustees not getting me out of the funds. If the funds break, it is my intention to go upon the highway. All the other English professions are at present so ungentlemanly by the conduct of those who follow them, that open robbing is the only fair resource left to a man of any principles; it is even honest, in comparison, by being undisguised.

“I wrote to you by last post, to say that you had done the handsome thing by Moore and the Memoranda. You are very good as times go, and would probably be still better but for the ‘march of events’ (as Napoleon called it), which won’t permit any body to be better than they should be.

“Love to Gifford. Believe me, &c.

“P.S. I restore Smith’s letter, whom thank for his good opinion. Is the bust by Thorwaldsen arrived?”

LETTER CCCCXLV.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Ravenna, August 23d, 1821.

“Enclosed are the two acts corrected. With regard to the charges about the shipwreck, I think that I told both you and Mr. Hobhouse, years ago, that there was not a single circumstance of it not taken from fact; not, indeed, from any single shipwreck, but all from actual facts of different wrecks*. Almost all Don Juan is real life, either my own,

* One of the charges of plagiarism brought against him by some scribblers of the day was founded (as I have already observed in the first volume of this work) on his having sought in the authentic records of real shipwrecks those materials out of which he has worked his own powerful description in the Second Canto of Don Juan. With as much justice might the Italian author (Galeani, if I recollect right), who wrote a Discourse on the Military Science displayed by Tasso in his battles, have reproached that poet with the sources from which he drew his knowledge:—with as much justice might Puysegur and Segrais, who have pointed out the same merit in Homer and Virgil, have withheld their praise because the science on which this merit was founded must have been derived by the skill and industry of these poets from others. So little was Tasso ashamed of those casual imitations of other poets which are so often branded as plagiarisms, that, in his Commentary on his Rime, he takes pains to point out and avow whatever coincidences of this kind occur in his own verses.

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or from people I knew. By the way, much of the description of the furniture, in Canto Third, is taken from Tully’s Tripoli (pray note this), and the rest from my own observation. Remember, I never meant to conceal this at all, and have only not stated it, because Don Juan had no preface nor name to it. If you think it worth while to make this statement, do so in your own way. I laugh at such charges, convinced that no writer ever borrowed less, or made his materials more his own. Much is coincidence: for instance, Lady Morgan (in a really excellent book, I assure you, on Italy), calls Venice an ocean Rome: I have the very same expression in Foscari, and yet you know that the play was written months ago, and sent to England: the ‘Italy’ I received only on the 16th instant.

“Your friend, like the public, is not aware, that my dramatic simplicity is studiously Greek, and must continue so: no reform ever succeeded at first*. I admire the old English dramatists; but this is quite another field, and has nothing to do with theirs. I want to make a regular English drama, no matter whether for the stage or not, which is not my object,—but a mental theatre.

“Yours.

While on this subject, I may be allowed to mention one signal instance, where a thought that had lain perhaps indistinctly in Byron’s memory since his youth, comes out so improved and brightened as to be, by every right of genius, his own. In the Two Noble Kinsmen of Beaumont and Fletcher (a play to which the picture of passionate friendship, delineated in the characters of Palamon and Arcite, would be sure to draw the attention of Byron in his boyhood) we find the following passage:— “Oh never Shall we two exercise, like twins of Honour, Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses Like proud seas under us.” Out of this somewhat forced simile, by a judicious transposition of the comparison, and by the substitution of the more definite word “waves” for “seas,” the clear, noble thought in one of the Cantos of Childe Harold has been produced;— “Once more upon the waters! yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me, as a steed That knows his rider.”

* “No man ever rose (says Pope) to any degree of perfection in writing but through obstinacy and an inveterate resolution against the stream of mankind.”

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“P.S. Can’t accept your courteous offer.

“For Orford and for Waldegrave You give much more than me you gave; Which is not fairly to behave, My Murray.

“Because if a live dog, ’tis said, Be worth a lion fairly sped, A live lord must be worth two dead, My Murray.

“And if, as the opinion goes, Verse hath a better sale than prose— Certes, I should have more than those, My Murray.

But now this sheet is nearly cramm’d, So, if you will, I sha’n’t be shamm’d, And if you won’t, you may be damn’d, My Murray.

“These matters must be arranged with Mr. Douglas Kinnaird. He is my trustee, and a man of honour. To him you can state all your mercantile reasons, which you might not like to state to me personally, such as, ‘heavy season’—‘flat public’—‘don’t go off’—‘lordship writes too much’—‘won’t take advice’—‘declining popularity’—‘deduction for the trade’—‘make very little’—‘generally lose by him’—‘pirated edition’ —‘foreign edition’—‘severe criticisms,’ &c. with other hints and howls for an oration, which I leave Douglas, who is an orator, to answer.

“You can also state them more freely to a third person, as between you and me they could only produce some smart postscripts, which would not adorn our mutual archives.

“I am sorry for the Queen, and that’s more than you are.”

LETTER CCCCXLVI.

TO MR. MOORE.

“Ravenna, August 24th, 1821.

“Yours of the 5th only yesterday, while I had letters of the 8th from London. Doth the post dabble into our letters? Whatever

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agreement you make with Murray, if satisfactory to you, must be so to me. There need be no scruple, because, though I used sometimes to buffoon to myself, loving a quibble as well as the barbarian himself (Shakspeare to wit)—‘that, like a Spartan, I would sell my life as dearly as possible’—it never was my intention to turn it to personal, pecuniary account, but to bequeath it to a friend—yourself—in the event of survivorship. I anticipated that period, because we happened to meet, and I urged you to make what was possible now by it, for reasons which are obvious. It has been no possible privation to me, and therefore does not require the acknowledgments you mention. So, for God’s sake, don’t consider it like * * * * * *

“By the way, when you write to Lady Morgan, will you thank her for her handsome speeches in her book about my books? I do not know her address. Her work is fearless and excellent on the subject of Italy—pray tell her so—and I know the country. I wish she had fallen in with me, I could have told her a thing or two that would have confirmed her positions.

“I am glad that you are satisfied with Murray, who seems to value dead lords more than live ones. I have just sent him the following answer to a proposition of his:—

“For Orford and for Waldegrave, &c.

“The argument of the above is, that he wanted to ‘stint me of my sizings,’ as Lear says—that is to say, not to propose an extravagant price for an extravagant poem, as is becoming. Pray take his guineas, by all means—I taught him that. He made me a filthy offer of pounds once, but I told him that, like physicians, poets must be dealt with in guineas, being the only advantage poets could have in the association with them, as votaries of Apollo. I write to you in hurry and bustle, which I will expound in my next.

“Yours ever. &c.

“P.S. You mention something of an attorney on his way to me on legal business. I have had no warning of such an apparition. What can the fellow want? I have some lawsuits and business, but have not

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heard of any thing to put me to the expense of a travelling lawyer. They do enough, in that way, at home.

“Ah, poor Queen! but perhaps it is for the best, if Herodotus’s anecdote is to be believed * * * * * *

“Remember me to any friendly Angles of our mutual acquaintance. What are you doing? Here I have had my hands full with tyrants and their victims. There never was such oppression, even in Ireland, scarcely!”

LETTER CCCCXLVII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Ravenna, August 31st, 1821.

“I have received the Juans, which are printed so carelessly, especially the fifth canto, as to be disgraceful to me, and not creditable to you. It really must be gone over again with the manuscript, the errors are so gross;—words added—changed—so as to make cacophony and nonsense. You have been careless of this poem because some of your squad don’t approve of it; but I tell you that it will be long before you see any thing half so good as poetry or writing. Upon what principle have you omitted the note on Bacon and Voltaire? and one of the concluding stanzas sent as an addition?—because it ended, I suppose, with—

“And do not link two virtuous souls for life Into that moral centaur, man and wife?

“Now, I must say, once for all, that I will not permit any human being to take such liberties with my writings because I am absent. I desire the omissions to be replaced (except the stanza on Semiramis)—particularly the stanza upon the Turkish marriages; and I request that the whole be carefully gone over with the MS.

“I never saw such stuff as is printed:—Gulleyaz instead of Gulbeyaz, &c. Are you aware that Gulbeyaz is a real name, and the other nonsense? I copied the cantos out carefully, so that there is no excuse, as the printer read, or at least prints, the MS. of the plays without error.

“If you have no feeling for your own reputation, pray have some little for mine. I have read over the poem carefully, and I tell you, it is

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Poetry. Your little envious knot of parson-poets may say what they please: time will show that I am not in this instance mistaken.

“Desire my friend Hobhouse to correct the press, especially of the last canto, from the manuscript as it is. It is enough to drive one out of one’s reason to see the infernal torture of words from the original. For instance the line—

“And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves—

is printed—

“And praise their rhymes, &c.

Also ‘precarious’ for ‘precocious;’ and this line, stanza 133,

“And this strong extreme effect to tire no longer.

Now do turn to the manuscript and see if I ever wrote such a line: it is not verse.

“No wonder the poem should fail (which, however, it won’t, you will see) with such things allowed to creep about it. Replace what is omitted, and correct what is so shamefully misprinted, and let the poem have fair play; and I fear nothing.

“I see in the last two numbers of the Quarterly a strong itching to assail me (see the review of ‘The Etonian’): let it, and see if they sha’n’t have enough of it. I do not allude to Gifford, who has always been my friend, and whom I do not consider as responsible for the articles written by others.

“You will publish the plays when ready. I am in such a humour about this printing of Don Juan so inaccurately that I must close this.

“Yours.

“P.S. I presume that you have not lost the stanza to which I allude? It was sent afterwards: look over my letters and find it.”

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LETTER CCCCXLVIII*.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“The enclosed letter is written in bad humour, but not without provocation. However, let it (that is, the bad humour) go for little; but I must request your serious attention to the abuses of the printer, which ought never to have been permitted. You forget that all the fools in London (the chief purchasers of your publications) will condemn in me the stupidity of your printer. For instance, in the notes to Canto Fifth, ‘the Adriatic shore of the Bosphorus’ instead of the Asiatic!! All this may seem little to you, so fine a gentleman with your ministerial connexions, but it is serious to me, who am thousands of miles off, and have no opportunity of not proving myself the fool your printer makes me, except your pleasure and leisure, forsooth.

“The gods prosper you, and forgive you, for I can’t.”

LETTER CCCCXLIX.

TO MR. MOORE.

“Ravenna, September 3d, 1821.

“By Mr. Mawman (a paymaster in the corps, in which you and I are privates) I yesterday expedited to your address, under cover one, two paper books, containing the Giaour-nal, and a thing or two. It won’t all do—even for the posthumous public—but extracts from it may. It is a brief and faithful chronicle of a month or so—parts of it not very discreet, but sufficiently sincere. Mr. Mawman saith that he will, in person or per friend, have it delivered to you in your Elysian fields.

“If you have got the new Juans, recollect that there are some very gross printer’s blunders, particularly in the Fifth Canto,—such as ‘praise’ for ‘pair’—‘precarious’ for ‘precocious’—‘Adriatic’ for ‘Asiatic’—‘case’ for ‘chase’—besides gifts of additional words and syllables, which make but a cacophonous rhythmus. Put the pen through the said, as I would

* Written in the envelope of the preceding Letter.

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mine through * *’s ears, if I were alongside him. As it is, I have sent him a rattling letter, as abusive as possible. Though he is publisher to the ‘Board of Longitude,’ he is in no danger of discovering it.

“I am packing for Pisa—but direct your letters here, till further notice.

“Yours ever, &c.”

One of the “paper-books” mentioned in this letter as intrusted to Mr. Mawman for me, contained a portion, to the amount of nearly a hundred pages, of a prose story, relating the adventures of a young Andalusian nobleman, which had been begun by him, at Venice, in 1817. The following passage is all I shall extract from this amusing Fragment.

“A few hours afterwards we were very good friends, and a few days after she set out for Arragon, with my son, on a visit to her father and mother. I did not accompany her immediately, having been in Arragon before, but was to join the family in their Moorish chateau within a few weeks.

“During her journey I received a very affectionate letter from Donna Josepha apprizing me of the welfare of herself and my son. On her arrival at the chateau, I received another still more affectionate, pressing me, in very fond, and rather foolish, terms, to join her immediately. As I was preparing to set out from Seville, I received a third—this was from her father, Don Jose di Cardozo, who requested me, in the politest manner, to dissolve my marriage. I answered him with equal politeness, that I would do no such thing. A fourth letter arrived—it was from Donna Josepha, in which she informed me that her father’s letter was written by her particular desire. I requested the reason by return of post—she replied, by express, that as reason had nothing to do with the matter, it was unnecessary to give any—but that she was an injured and excellent woman. I then inquired why she had written to me the two preceding affectionate letters, requesting me to come to Arragon. She answered, that was because she believed me out of my senses—that, being unfit to take care of myself, I had only to set out on this journey alone,

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and making my way without difficulty to Don Jose di Cardozo’s, I should there have found the tenderest of wives and—a strait waistcoat.

“I had nothing to reply to this piece of affection but a reiteration of my request for some lights upon the subject. I was answered that they would only be related to the Inquisition. In the mean time, our domestic discrepancy had become a public topic of discussion; and the world, which always decides justly, not only in Arragon but in Andalusia, determined that I was not only to blame, but that all Spain could produce nobody so blamable. My case was supposed to comprise all the crimes which could, and several which could not, be committed, and little less than an auto-da-fé was anticipated as the result. But let no man say that we are abandoned by our friends in adversity—it was just the reverse. Mine thronged around me to condemn, advise, and console me with their disapprobation.—They told me all that was would, or could be said on the subject. They shook their heads—they exhorted me—deplored me, with tears in their eyes, and—went to dinner.”

LETTER CCCCL.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Ravenna, September 4th, 1821.

“By Saturday’s post, I sent you a fierce and furibund letter upon the subject of the printer’s blunders in Don Juan. I must solicit your attention to the topic, though my wrath hath subsided into sullenness.

“Yesterday I received Mr. ——, a friend of yours, and because he is a friend of yours; and that’s more than I would do in an English case, except for those whom I honour. I was as civil as I could be among packages even to the very chairs and tables, for I am going to Pisa in a few weeks, and have sent and am sending off my chattels. It regretted me* that, my books and every thing being packed, I could

* It will be observed, from this and a few other instances, that notwithstanding the wonderful purity of English he was able to preserve in his writings, while living constantly with persons speaking a different language, he had already begun so far to feel the influence of

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not send you a few things I meant for you; but they were all sealed and baggaged, so as to have made it a month’s work to get at them again. I gave him an envelope, with the Italian scrap in it*, alluded to in my Gilchrist defence. Hobhouse will make it out for you, and it will make you laugh, and him too, the spelling particularly. The ‘Mericani,’ of whom they call me the ‘Capo’ (or Chief), mean ‘Americans,’ which is the name given in Romagna to a part of the Carbonari; that is to say, to the popular part, the troops of the Carbonari. They are originally a society of hunters in the forest, who took the name of Americans, but at present comprise some thousands, &c.; but I sha’n’t let you further into the secret, which may be participated with the postmasters. Why they thought me their Chief, I know not: their Chiefs are like ‘Legion, being many.’ However, it is a post of more honour than profit, for, now that they are persecuted, it is fit that I should aid them; and so I have done, as far as my means would permit. They will rise again some day, for these fools of the government are blundering: they actually seem to know nothing, for they have arrested and banished many of their own party, and let others escape who are not their friends.

“What think’st thou of Greece?

“Address to me here as usual, till you hear further from me.

“By Mawman I have sent a Journal to Moore; but it won’t do for the public,—at least a great deal of it won’t;—parts may.

“I read over the Juans, which are excellent. Your squad are quite wrong; and so you will find by and by. I regret that I do not go on with it, for I had all the plan for several cantos, and different countries and climes. You say nothing of the note I enclosed to you†, which will explain why I agreed to discontinue it (at Madame

this habit to fall occasionally into Italianisms in his familiar letters.—“I am in the case to know”—“I have caused write”—“It regrets me,” &c.

* An anonymous letter which he had received, threatening him with assassination.

† In this note, so highly honourable to the fair writer, she says, “Remember, my Byron, the promise you have made me. Never shall I be able to tell you the satisfaction I feel from it, so great are the sentiments of pleasure and confidence with which the sacrifice you have made has inspired me.” In a postscript to the note she adds, “I am only sorry that Don Juan was not left in the infernal regions.”—“Ricordati, mio Byron, della promessa che mi hai fatta. Non potrei mai dirti la satisfazione ch’ io ne provo!—sono tanti i sentimenti di piacere e di

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G——’s request); but you are so grand, and sublime, and occupied, that one would think, instead of publishing for ‘the Board of Longitude,’ that you were trying to discover it.

“Let me hear that Gifford is better. He can’t be spared either by you or me.”

LETTER CCCCLI.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Ravenna, September 12, 1821.

“By Tuesday’s post, I forwarded, in three packets, the drama of Cain in three acts, of which I request the acknowledgment when arrived. To the last speech of Eve, in the last act (i. e. where she curses Cain), add these three lines to the concluding ones—

“May the grass wither from thy foot! the woods Deny thee shelter! earth a home! the dust A grave! the sun his light! and Heaven her God!

“There’s as pretty a piece of imprecation for you, when joined to the lines already sent, as you may wish to meet with in the course of your business. But don’t forget the addition of the above three lines, which are clinchers to Eve’s speech.

“Let me know what Gifford thinks (if the play arrives in safety); for I have a good opinion of the piece, as poetry; it is in my gay metaphysical style, and in the Manfred line.

“You must at least commend my facility and variety, when you consider what I have done within the last fifteen months, with my head, too, full of other and of mundane matters. But no doubt you will avoid saying any good of it, for fear I should raise the price upon you: that’s right: stick to business. Let me know what your other ragamuffins

confidenza che il tuo sacrificio m’inspira.”—“Mi riveresce solo che Don Giovanni non resti all’ Inferno.” In enclosing the lady’s note to Mr. Murray, July 4th, Lord B. says, “This is the note of acknowledgment for the promise not to continue Don Juan. She says, In the postscript, that she is only sorry that D. J. does not remain in Hell (or go there).”

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are writing, for I suppose you don’t like starting too many of your vagabonds at once. You may give them the start, for any thing I care.

“Why don’t you publish my Pulci—the very best thing I ever wrote,—with the Italian to it? I wish I was alongside of you; nothing is ever done in a man’s absence; every body runs counter, because they can. If ever I do return to England, (which I sha’n’t, though,) I will write a poem to which ‘English Bards,’ &c. shall be new milk, in comparison. Your present literary world of mountebanks stands in need of such an Avatar. But I am not yet quite bilious enough: a season or two more, and a provocation or two, will wind me up to the point, and then have at the whole set!

“I have no patience with the sort of trash you send me out by way of books; except Scott’s novels, and three or four other things, I never saw such work, or works. Campbell is lecturing—Moore idling—S * * twaddling—W * * driveling—C * * muddling—* * piddling—B * * quibbling, squabbling, and sniveling. * * will do, if he don’t cant too much, nor imitate Southey: the fellow has poesy in him; but he is envious, and unhappy, as all the envious are. Still he is among the best of the day. B * * C * * will do better by-and-by, I dare say, if he don’t get spoiled by green tea, and the praises of Pentonville and Paradise-row. The pity of these men is, that they never lived in high life, nor in solitude: there is no medium for the knowledge of the busy or the still world. If admitted into high life for a season, it is merely as spectators—they form no part of the mechanism thereof. Now Moore and I, the one by circumstances, and the other by birth, happened to be free of the corporation, and to have entered into its pulses and passions quarum partes fuimus. Both of us have learnt by this much which nothing else could have taught us.

“Yours.

“P.S. I saw one of your brethren, another of the allied sovereigns of Grub-street, the other day, Mawman the Great, by whom I sent due homage to your imperial self. To-morrow’s post may perhaps bring a letter from you, but you are the most ungrateful and ungracious of

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correspondents. But there is some excuse for you, with your perpetual levee of politicians, parsons, scribblers, and loungers. Some day I will give you a poetical catalogue of them.”

LETTER CCCCLII.

TO MR. MOORE.

“Ravenna, September 17th, 1821.

“The enclosed lines as you will directly perceive, are written by the Rev. W. L. B * *. Of course it is for him to deny them if they are not.

“Believe me yours ever and most affectionately,

“B.

P.S. Can you forgive this? It is only a reply to your lines against my Italians. Of course I will stand by my lines against all men; but it is heart-breaking to see such things in a people as the reception of that unredeemed * * * * * * in an oppressed country. Your apotheosis is now reduced to a level with his welcome, and their gratitude to Grattan is cancelled by their atrocious adulation of this &c. &c. &c.

LETTER CCCCLIII.

TO MR. MOORE

“Ravenna, September 19th, 1821.

“I am in all the sweat, dust, and blasphemy of an universal packing of all my things, furniture, &c. for Pisa, whither I go for the winter. The cause has been the exile of all my fellow Carbonics, and, amongst them, of the whole family of Madame G., who, you know, was divorced from her husband last week, ‘on account of P. P., clerk of this parish,’

† “The Irish Avatar.” In this copy the following sentence (taken from a Letter of Curran, in the able Life of that true Irishman, by his son) is prefixed as a motto to the Poem,—“And Ireland, like a bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive the paltry rider.”—Letter of Curran, Life, vol. ii. page 336. At the end of the verses are these words:“—(Signed) W. L. B. * M. A., and written with a view to a Bishoprick.”

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and who is obliged to join her father and relatives, now in exile there, to avoid being shut up in a monastery, because the Pope’s decree of separation required her to reside in casa paterna, or else, for decorum’s sake, in a convent. As I could not say, with Hamlet, ‘Get thee to a nunnery,’ I am preparing to follow them.

“It is awful work, this love, and prevents all a man’s projects of good or glory. I wanted to go to Greece lately (as every thing seems up here) with her brother, who is a very fine, brave fellow (I have seen him put to the proof), and wild about liberty. But the tears of a woman who has left her husband for a man, and the weakness of one’s own heart, are paramount to these projects, and I can hardly indulge them.

“We were divided in choice between Switzerland and Tuscany, and I gave my vote for Pisa, as nearer the Mediterranean, which I love for the sake of the shores which it washes, and for my young recollections of 1809. Switzerland is a curst selfish, swinish country of brutes, placed in the most romantic region of the world. I never could bear the inhabitants, and still less their English visitors; for which reason, after writing for some information about houses, upon hearing that there was a colony of English all over the cantons of Geneva, &c., I immediately gave up the thought, and persuaded the Gambas to do the same.

“By last post I sent you ‘the Irish Avatar,’—what think you? The last line—’a name never spoke but with curses or jeers’—must run either ‘a name only uttered with curses or jeers,’ or, ‘a wretch never named but with curses or jeers.’ Because as how, ‘spoke’ is not grammar, except in the House of Commons; and I doubt whether we can say ‘a name spoken,’ for mentioned. I have some doubts, too, about ‘repay,’—’and for murder repay with a shout and a smile.’ Should it not be, ‘and for murder repay him with shouts and a smile,’ or ‘reward him with shouts and a smile?’

“So, pray put your poetical pen through the MS., and take the least bad of the emendations. Also, if there be any further breaking of Priscian’s head, will you apply a plaister? I wrote in the greatest hurry and fury, and sent it you the day after; so, doubtless, there

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will be some awful constructions, and a rather lawless conscription of rhythmus.

“With respect to what Anna Seward calls ‘the liberty of transcript,’—when complaining of Miss Matilda Muggleton, the accomplished daughter of a choral vicar of Worcester Cathedral, who had abused the said ‘liberty of transcript,’ by inserting in the Malvern Mercury, Miss Seward’s ‘Elegy on the South Pole,’ as her own production, with her own signature, two years after having taken a copy, by permission of the authoress—with regard, I say, to the ‘liberty of transcript,’ I by no means oppose an occasional copy to the benevolent few, provided it does not degenerate into such licentiousness of Verb and Noun as may tend to ‘disparage my parts of speech’ by the carelessness of the transcribblers.

“I do not think that there is much danger of the ‘King’s Press being abused’ upon the occasion, if the publishers of journals have any regard for their remaining liberty of person. It is as pretty a piece of invective as ever put publisher in the way to ‘Botany.’ Therefore, if they meddle with it, it is at their peril. As for myself, I will answer any jontleman—though I by no means recognise a ‘right of search’ into an unpublished production and unavowed poem. The same applies to things published sans consent. I hope you like, at least, the concluding lines of the Pome?

“What are you doing, and where are you? in England? Nail Murray—nail him to his own counter, till he shells out the thirteens. Since I wrote to you, I have sent him another tragedy—’Cain’ by name—making three in MS. now in his hands, or in the printer’s. It is in the Manfred, metaphysical style, and full of some Titanic declamation;—Lucifer being one of the dram. pers., who takes Cain a voyage among the stars, and, afterwards, to ‘Hades,’ where he shows him the phantoms of a former world, and its inhabitants. I have gone upon the notion of Cuvier, that the world has been destroyed three or four times, and was inhabited by mammoths, behemoths, and what not; but not by man till the Mosaic period, as, indeed, is proved by the strata of bones found;—those of all unknown animals, and known, being dug out, but none of mankind. I have, therefore, supposed Cain to be shown, in the rational

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Preadamites, beings endowed with a higher intelligence than man, but totally unlike him in form, and with much greater strength of mind and person. You may suppose the small talk which takes place between him and Lucifer upon these matters is not quite canonical.

“The consequence is, that Cain comes back and kills Abel in a fit of dissatisfaction, partly with the politics of Paradise, which had driven them all out of it, and partly because (as it is written in Genesis) Abel’s sacrifice was the more acceptable to the Deity. I trust that the Rhapsody has arrived—it is in three acts, and entitled ‘A Mystery.’ according to the former Christian custom, and in honour of what it probably will remain to the reader.

“Yours, &c.”

LETTER CCCCLIV.

TO MR. MOORE.

“September 20th, 1821.

“After the stanza on Grattan, concluding with ‘His soul o’er the freedom implored and denied,’ will it please you to cause insert the following ‘Addenda,’ which I dreamed of during to-day’s Siesta:

“Ever glorious Grattan! &c. &c. &c.

I will tell you what to do. Get me twenty copies of the whole carefully and privately printed off, as your lines were on the Naples affair. Send me six, and distribute the rest according to your own pleasure.

“I am in a fine vein, ‘so full of pastime and prodigality!’—So, here’s to your health in a glass of grog. Pray write, that I may know by return of post—address to me at Pisa. The gods give you joy!

“Where are you? in Paris? Let us hear. You will take care that there be no printer’s name, nor author’s, as in the Naples stanzas, at least for the present.”

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LETTER CCCCLV.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Ravenna, September 20th, 1821.

“You need not send ‘the Blues,’ which is a mere buffoonery, never meant for publication*.

“The papers to which I allude, in case of survivorship, are collections of letters, &c. since I was sixteen years old, contained in the trunks in the care of Mr. Hobhouse. This collection is at least doubled by those I have now here, all received since my last ostracism. To these I should wish the editor to have access, not for the purpose of abusing confidences, nor of hurting the feelings of correspondents living, nor the memories of the dead; but there are things which would do neither, that I have left unnoticed or unexplained, and which (like all such things) time only can permit to be noticed or explained, though some are to my credit. The task will of course require delicacy; but that will not be wanting, if Moore and Hobhouse survive me, and, I may add, yourself; and that you may all three do so is, I assure you, my very sincere wish. I am not sure that long life is desirable for one of my temper, and constitutional depression of spirits, which of course I suppress in society; but which breaks out when alone, and in my writings, in spite of myself. It has been deepened, perhaps, by some long-past events (I do not allude to my marriage, &c.—on the contrary, that raised them by the persecution giving a fillip to my spirits); but I call it constitutional, as I have reason to think it. You know, or you do not know, that my maternal grandfather (a very clever man, and amiable, I am told) was strongly suspected of suicide (he was found drowned in the Avon at Bath), and that another very near relative of the same branch took poison, and was merely saved by antidotes. For the first of these events there was no apparent cause, as he was rich, respected, and of considerable intellectual resources, hardly forty years of age, and not at all addicted to any unhinging vice. It

* This short satire, which is wholly unworthy of his pen, appeared afterwards in the Liberal.

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was, however, but a strong suspicion, owing to the manner of his death and his melancholy temper. The second had a cause, but it does not become me to touch upon it: it happened when I was far too young to be aware of it, and I never heard of it till after the death of that relative, many years afterwards. I think, then, that I may call this dejection constitutional. I had always been told that I resembled more my maternal grandfather than any of my father’s family—that is, in the gloomier part of his temper, for he was what you call a good-natured man, and I am not.

“The Journal here I sent to Moore the other day; but as it is a mere diary, only parts of it would ever do for publication. The other Journal of the Tour in 1816, I should think Augusta might let you have a copy of.

“I am much mortified that Gifford don’t take to my new dramas. To be sure, they are as opposite to the English drama as one thing can be to another; but I have a notion that, if understood, they will in time find favour (though not on the stage) with the reader. The simplicity of plot is intentional, and the avoidance of rant also, as also the compression of the speeches in the more severe situations. What I seek to show in ‘the Foscaris’ is the suppressed passions, rather than the rant of the present day. For that matter—

‘Nay, if thou’lt mouth, I’ll rant as well as thou—’

would not be difficult, as I think I have shown in my younger productions,—not dramatic ones, to be sure. But, as I said before, I am mortified that Gifford don’t like them; but I see no remedy, our notions on that subject being so different. How is he?—well, I hope? let me know. I regret his demur the more that he has been always my grand patron, and I know no praise which would compensate me in my own mind for his censure. I do not mind Reviews, as I can work them at their own weapons.

“Yours, &c.

“Address to me at Pisa, whither I am going. The reason is, that all my Italian friends here have been exiled, and are met there for the present, and I go to join them, as agreed upon, for the winter.”

A. D. 1821.

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LETTER CCCCLVI.

TO MR MURRAY.

“Ravenna, September 24th, 1821.

“I have been thinking over our late correspondence, and wish to propose to you the following articles for our future:

“1stly. That you shall write to me of yourself, of the health, wealth, and welfare of all friends; but of me (quoad me) little or nothing.

“2dly. That you shall send me soda-powders, tooth-powder, toothbrushes, or any such antiodontalgic or chemical articles, as heretofore, ‘ad libitum,’ upon being reimbursed for the same.

“3dly. That you shall not send me any modern, or (as they are called) new publications, in English, whatsoever, save and excepting any writing, prose or verse, of (or reasonably presumed to be of) Walter Scott, Crabbe, Moore, Campbell, Rogers, Gifford, Joanna Baillie, Irving (the American), Hogg, Wilson (Isle of Palms man), or any especial single work of fancy which is thought to be of considerable merit; Voyages and Travels, provided that they are neither in Greece, Spain, Asia Minor, Albania, nor Italy, will be welcome. Having travelled the countries mentioned, I know that what is said of them can convey nothing farther which I desire to know about them.—No other English works whatsoever.

“4thly. That you send me no periodical works whatsoever—no Edinburgh, Quarterly, Monthly, nor any review, magazine, or newspaper, English or foreign, of any description.

“5thly. That you send me no opinions whatsoever, either good, bad, or indifferent, of yourself, or your friends, or others, concerning any work, or works, of mine, past, present, or to come.

“6thly. That all negotiations in matters of business between you and me pass through the medium of the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird, my friend and trustee, or Mr. Hobhouse, as ‘Alter ego,’ and tantamount to myself during my absence—or presence.

“Some of these propositions may at first seem strange, but they are founded. The quantity of trash I have received as books is incalculable,

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and neither amused nor instructed. Reviews and magazines are at the best but ephemeral and superficial reading:—who thinks of the grand article of last year in any given Review? In the next place, if they regard myself, they tend to increase egotism. If favourable, I do not deny that the praise elates, and if unfavourable, that the abuse irritates. The latter may conduct me to inflict a species of satire, which would neither do good to you nor to your friends: they may smile now, and so may you; but if I took you all in hand, it would not be difficult to cut you up like gourds. I did as much by as powerful people at nineteen years old, and I know little as yet in three-and-thirty, which should prevent me from making all your ribs gridirons for your hearts, if such were my propensity: but it is not; therefore let me hear none of your provocations. If any thing occurs so very gross as to require my notice, I shall hear of it from my legal friends. For the rest, I merely request to be left in ignorance.

“The same applies to opinions, good, bad, or indifferent, of persons in conversation or correspondence. These do not interrupt, but they soil the current of my mind. I am sensitive enough, but not till I am troubled; and here I am beyond the touch of the short arms of literary England, except the few feelers of the polypus that crawl over the channels in the way of extract.

“All these precautions in England would be useless; the libeller or the flatterer would there reach me in spite of all; but in Italy we know little of literary England, and think less, except what reaches us through some garbled and brief extract in some miserable gazette. For two years (excepting two or three articles cut out and sent to you by the post) I never read a newspaper which was not forced upon me by some accident, and know, upon the whole, as little of England as you do of Italy, and God knows that is little enough, with all your travels, &c. &c. &c. The English travellers know Italy as you know Guernsey: how much is that?

“If any thing occurs so violently gross or personal as requires notice, Mr. Douglas Kinnaird will let me know; but of praise, I desire to hear nothing.

“You will say, ‘to what tends all this?’ I will answer that;—to keep my mind free and unbiassed by all paltry and personal irritabilities of praise or censure—to let my genius take its natural direction, while

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my feelings are like the dead, who know nothing and feel nothing of all or aught that is said or done in their regard.

“If you can observe these conditions, you will spare yourself and others some pain: let me not be worked upon to rise up; for if I do, it will not be for a little. If you cannot observe these conditions, we shall cease to be correspondents,—but not friends, for I shall always be yours ever and truly,

“Byron.

“P.S. I have taken these resolutions not from any irritation against you or yours, but simply upon reflection that all reading, either praise or censure, of myself has done me harm. When I was in Switzerland and Greece, I was out of the way of hearing either, and how I wrote there!—In Italy I am out of the way of it too; but latterly, partly through my fault, and partly through your kindness in wishing to send me the newest and most periodical publications, I have had a crowd of Reviews, &c. thrust upon me, which have bored me with their jargon, of one kind or another, and taken off my attention from greater objects. You have also sent me a parcel of trash of poetry, for no reason that I can conceive, unless to provoke me to write a new ‘English Bards.’ Now this I wish to avoid; for if ever I do, it will be a strong production; and I desire peace as long as the fools will keep their nonsense out of my way*.”

* It would be difficult to describe more strongly or more convincingly than Lord Byron has done in this letter the sort of petty, but thwarting, obstructions and distractions which are at present thrown across the path of men of real talent by that swarm of minor critics and pretenders with whom the want of a vent in other professions has crowded all the walks of literature. Nor is it only the writers of the day that suffer from this multifarious rush into the mart;—the readers also, from having (as Lord Byron expresses it in another letter) “the superficies of too many things presented to them at once,” come to lose by degrees their powers of discrimination; and, in the same manner as the palate becomes confused in trying various wines, so the public taste declines in proportion as the impressions to which it is exposed multiply.

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LETTER CCCCLVII.

TO MR. MOORE.

“September 27th, 1821.

“It was not Murray’s fault. I did not send the MS. overture, but I send it now†, and it may be restored;—or, at any rate, you may keep the original, and give any copies you please. I send it, as written, and as I read it to you—I have no other copy.

“By last week’s two posts, in two packets, I sent to your address, at Paris, a longish poem upon the late Irishism of your countrymen in their reception of * * *. Pray, have you received it? It is in ‘the high Roman fashion,’ and full of ferocious phantasy. As you could not well take up the matter with Paddy (being of the same nest), I have;—but I hope still that I have done justice to his great men and his good heart. As for * * *, you will find it laid on with a trowel. I delight in your ‘fact historical’—is it a fact?

“Yours, &c.

“P.S. You have not answered me about Schlegel—why not? Address to me at Pisa, whither I am going, to join the exiles—a pretty numerous body, at present. Let me hear how you are, and what you mean to do. Is there no chance of your recrossing the Alps? If the G. Rex marries again, let him not want an Epithalamium—suppose a joint concern of you and me, like Sternhold and Hopkins!”

LETTER CCCCLVIII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“September 28th, 1821.

“I add another cover to request you to ask Moore to obtain (if possible) my letters to the late Lady Melbourne from Lady Cowper. They are very numerous, and ought to have been restored long ago, as

† The lines “Oh Wellington,” which I had missed in their original place at the opening of the Third Canto, and took for granted that they had been suppressed by his publisher.

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LIFE OF LORD BYRON.

537

I was ready to give back Lady Melbourne’s in exchange. These latter are in Mr. Hobhouse’s custody with my other papers, and shall be punctually restored if required. I did not choose before to apply to Lady Cowper, as her mother’s death naturally kept me from intruding upon her feelings at the time of its occurrence. Some years have now elapsed, and it is essential that I should have my own epistles. They are essential as confirming that part of the ‘Memoranda’ which refers to the two periods (1812 and 1814) when my marriage with her niece was in contemplation, and will tend to show what my real views and feelings were upon that subject.

“You need not be alarmed; the ‘fourteen years†’ will hardly elapse without some mortality amongst us: it is a long lease of life to speculate upon. So your calculation will not be in so much peril, as the ‘argosie’ will sink before that time, and ‘the pound of flesh’ be withered previously to your being so long out of a return.

“I also wish to give you a hint or two (as you have really behaved very handsomely to Moore in the business, and are a fine fellow in your line) for your advantage. If by your own management you can extract any of my epistles from Lady ——, (* * * * * * *), they might be of use in your collection (sinking of course the names and all such circumstances as might hurt living feelings, or those of survivors); they treat of more topics than love occasionally.

* * * * * *

“I will tell you who may happen to have some letters of mine in their possession: Lord Powerscourt, some to his late brother; Mr. Long of—(I forget his place)—but the father of Edward Long of the Guards, who was drowned in going to Lisbon early in 1809; Miss Elizabeth Pigot, of Southwell, Notts (she may be Mistress by this time, for she had a year or two more than I): they were not love-letters, so that you might have them without scruple. There are, or, might be, some to the late Rev. J. C. Tattersall, in the hands of his brother (half-

† He here adverts to a passing remark, in one of Mr. Murray’s letters, that, as his lordship’s “Memoranda” were not to be published in his lifetime, the sum now paid for the work, 21001., would most probably, upon a reasonable calculation of survivorship, amount ultimately to no less than 8000l.

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brother) Mr. Wheatley, who resides near Canterbury, I think. There are some of Charles Gordon, now of Dulwich; and some few to Mrs. Chaworth; but these latter are probably destroyed or inaccessible.

* * * * * *

“I mention these people and particulars merely as chances. Most of them have probably destroyed the letters, which in fact are of little import, many of them written when very young, and several at school and college.

“Peel (the second brother of the Secretary) was a correspondent of mine, and also Porter, the son of the Bishop of Clogher; Lord Clare a very voluminous one; William Harness (a friend of Milman’s) another; Charles Drummond (son of the banker); William Bankes (the voyager), your friend; R. C. Dallas, Esq.; Hodgson; Henry Drury; Hobhouse you were already aware of.

“I have gone through this long list† of

‘The cold, the faithless, and the dead,’

because I know that, like ‘the curious in fish-sauce,’ you are a researcher of such things.

“Besides these, there are other occasional ones to literary men and so forth, complimentary, &c. &c. &c. not worth much more than the rest. There are some hundreds, too, of Italian notes of mine, scribbled

† To all the persons upon this list who were accessible, application has, of course, been made,—with what success it is in the reader’s power to judge from the communications that have been laid before him. Among the companions of the poet’s boyhood there are (as I have already had occasion to mention and regret) but few traces of his youthful correspondence to be found; and of all those who knew him at that period, his fair Southwell correspondent alone seems to have been sufficiently endowed with the gift of second-sight to anticipate the Byron of a future day, and foresee the compound interest that Time and Fame would accumulate on every precious scrap of the young bard which she hoarded. On the whole, however, it is not unsatisfactory to be able to state that, with the exception of a very small minority (only one of whom is possessed of any papers of much importance), every distinguished associate and intimate of the noble poet, from the very outset to the close of his extraordinary career, have come forward cordially to communicate whatever memorials they possessed of him,—trusting, as I am willing to flatter myself, that they confided these treasures to one, who, if not able to do full justice to the memory of their common friend, would, at least, not willingly suffer it to be dishonoured in his hands.

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LIFE OF LORD BYRON.

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with a noble contempt of the grammar and dictionary, in very English Etruscan; for I speak Italian very fluently, but write it carelessly and incorrectly to a degree.”

LETTER CCCCLIX.

TO MR. MOORE.

“September 29th, 1821.

“I send you two rough things, prose and verse, not much in themselves, but which will show, one of them, the state of the country, and the other, of your friend’s mind, when they were written. Neither of them were sent to the person concerned, but you will see, by the style of them, that they were sincere, as I am in signing myself

“Yours ever and truly,

“B.”

Of the two enclosures, mentioned in the foregoing note, one was a letter intended to be sent to Lady Byron, relative to his money invested in the funds, of which the following are extracts.

“Ravenna, Marza 1mo, 1821.

I have received your message, through my sister’s letter, about English security, &c. &c. It is considerate (and true, even), that such is to be found—but not that I shall find it. Mr. * *, for his own views and purposes, will thwart all such attempts till he has accomplished his own, viz. to make me lend my fortune to some client of his choosing.

“At this distance—after this absence, and with my utter ignorance of affairs and business—with my temper and impatience, I have neither the means nor the mind to resist * * * * * * * Thinking of the funds as I do, and wishing to secure a reversion to my sister and her children, I should jump at most expedients.

“What I told you is come to pass—the Neapolitan war is declared. Your funds will fail, and I shall be in consequence ruined. That’s nothing—but my blood relations will be so. You and your child are provided for. Live and prosper—I wish so much to both. Live and

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prosper—you have the means. I think but of my real kin and kindred, who may be the victims of this accursed bubble.

“You neither know nor dream of the consequences of this war. It is a war of men with monarchs, and will spread like a spark on the dry, rank grass of the vegetable desert. What it is with you and your English, you do not know, for ye sleep. What it is with us here, I know, for it is before, and around, and within us.

“Judge of my detestation of England and of all that it inherits, when I avoid returning to your country at a time when not only my pecuniary interests, but, it may be, even my personal security, require it. I can say no more, for all letters are opened. A short time will decide upon what is to be done here, and then you will learn it without being more troubled with me or my correspondence. Whatever happens, an individual is little, so the cause is forwarded.

“I have no more to say to you on the score of affairs, or on any other subject.”

The second enclosure in the note consisted of some verses, written by him, December 10th, 1820, on seeing the following paragraph in a newspaper. “Lady Byron is this year the lady patroness at the annual Charity Ball given at the Town Hall at Hinckly, Leicestershire, and Sir G. Crewe, Bart. the principal steward.” These verses are full of strong and indignant feeling,—every stanza concluding pointedly with the words “Charity Ball,”—and the thought that predominates through the whole may be collected from a few of the opening lines

“What matter the pangs of a husband and father, If his sorrows in exile be great or be small, So the Pharisee’s glories around her she gather, And the Saint patronizes her ‘Charity Ball.’

“What matters—a heart, which though faulty was feeling, Be driven to excesses which once could appal— That the Sinner should suffer is only fair dealing, As the Saint keeps her charity back for ‘the Ball.’” &c. &c

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LIFE OF LORD BYRON.

541

LETTER CCCCLX.

TO MR. MOORE.

“September—no—October 1, 1821.

“I have written to you lately, both in prose and verse, at great length, to Paris and London. I presume that Mrs. Moore, or whoever is your Paris deputy, will forward my packets to you in London.

“I am setting off for Pisa if a slight incipient intermittent fever do not prevent me. I fear it is not strong enough to give Murray much chance of realizing his thirteens again. I hardly should regret it, I think, provided you raised your price upon him—as what Lady Holderness (my sister’s grandmother, a Dutchwoman) used to call Augusta, her Residee Legatoo—so as to provide for us all; my bones with a splendid and larmoyante edition, and you with double what is extractable during my lifetime.

“I have a strong presentiment that (bating some out of the way accident) you will survive me. The difference of eight years, or whatever it is, between our ages, is nothing. I do not feel (nor am, indeed, anxious to feel) the principle of life in me tend to longevity. My father and mother died, the one at thirty-five or six, and the other at forty-five; and Doctor Rush, or somebody else, says that nobody lives long, without having one parent, at least, an old stager.

“I should, to be sure, like to see out my eternal mother-in-law, not so much for her heritage, but from my natural antipathy. But the indulgence of this natural desire is too much to expect from the Providence who presides over old women. I bore you with all this about lives, because it has been put in my way by a calculation of insurances which Murray has sent me. I really think you should have more, if I evaporate within a reasonable time.

“I wonder if my ‘Cain’ has got safe to England. I have written since about sixty stanzas of a poem, in octave stanzas (in the Pulci style, which the fools in England think was invented by Whistlecraft—it is

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as old as the hills in Italy) called ‘The Vision of Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus,’ with this motto—

‘A Daniel come to judgment, yea, a Daniel: I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.’

“In this it is my intent to put the said George’s Apotheosis in a Whig point of view, not forgetting the Poet Laureate for his preface and his other demerits.

“I am just got to the pass where Saint Peter, hearing that the royal defunct had opposed Catholic Emancipation, rises up and, interrupting Satan’s oration, declares he will change places with Cerberus sooner than let him into heaven, while he has the keys thereof.

“I must go and ride, though rather feverish and chilly. It is the ague season; but the agues do me rather good than harm. The feel after the fit is as if one had got rid of one’s body for good and all.

“The gods go with you!—Address to Pisa.

“Ever yours.

“P.S. Since I came back I feel better, though I staid out too late for this malaria season, under the thin crescent of a very young moon, and got off my horse to walk in an avenue with a Signora for an hour. I thought of you and

‘When at eve thou rovest By the star thou lovest.’

But it was not in a romantic mood, as I should have been once; and yet it was a new woman (that is, new to me), and, of course, expected to be made love to. But I merely made a few commonplace speeches. I feel as your poor friend Curran said, before his death, ‘a mountain of lead upon my heart,’ which I believe to be constitutional, and that nothing will remove it but the same remedy.”

A. D. 1821.

LIFE OF LORD BYRON.

543

LETTER CCCCLXI.

TO MR. MOORE.

“October 6th, 1821.

“By this post I have sent my nightmare to balance the incubus of * * *’s impudent anticipation of the Apotheosis of George the Third. I should like you to take a look over it, as I think there are two or three things in it which might please ‘our puir hill folk.’

“By the last two or three posts I have written to you at length. My ague bows to me every two or three days, but we are not as yet upon intimate speaking terms. I have an intermittent generally every two years, when the climate is favourable (as it is here), but it does me no harm. What I find worse, and cannot get rid of, is the growing depression of my spirits, without sufficient cause. I ride—I am not intemperate in eating or drinking—and my general health is as usual, except a slight ague, which rather does good than not. It must be constitutional; for I know nothing more than usual to depress me to that degree.

“How do you manage? I think you told me, at Venice, that your spirits did not keep up without a little claret. I can drink, and bear a good deal of wine (as you may recollect in England); but it don’t exhilarate—it makes me savage and suspicious, and even quarrelsome. Laudanum has a similar effect; but I can take much of it without any effect at all. The thing that gives me the highest spirits (it seems absurd, but true) is a dose of salts—I mean in the afternoon, after their effect*. But one can’t take them like champagne.

* It was, no doubt, from a similar experience of its effects that Dryden always took physic, when about to write any thing of importance. His caricature, Bayes, is accordingly made to say, “When I have a grand design, I ever take physic and let blood; for, when you would have pure swiftness of thought and fiery flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive part;—in short,” &c. &c. On this subject of the effects of medicine upon the mind and spirits, some curious facts and illustrations have been, with his usual research, collected by Mr. d’Israeli, in his amusing “Curiosities of Literature.”

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“Excuse this old woman’s letter; but my lemelancholy don’t depend upon health, for it is just the same, well or ill, or here or there.

“Yours, &c.

LETTER CCCCLXII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Ravenna, October 9th, 1821.

“You will please to present or convey the enclosed poem to Mr. Moore. I sent him another copy to Paris; but he has probably left that city.

“Don’t forget to send me my first act of ‘Werner’ (if Hobhouse can find it amongst my papers)—send it by the post (to Pisa); and also cut out Sophia Lee’s ‘German’s Tale’ from the ‘Canterbury Tales,’ and send it in a letter also. I began that tragedy in 1815.

“By the way, you have a good deal of my prose tracts in MS.? Let me have proofs of them all again—I mean the controversial ones, including the last two or three years of time. Another question!—The Epistle of St. Paul, which I translated from the Armenian, for what reason have you kept it back, though you published that stuff which gave rise to the ‘Vampire?’ Is it because you are afraid to print any thing in opposition to the cant of the Quarterly about Manicheism? Let me have a proof of that Epistle directly. I am a better Christian than those parsons of yours, though not paid for being so.

“Send—Faber’s Treatise on the Cabiri.

“Sainte Croix’s Mystères du Paganisme (scarce, perhaps, but to be found, as Mitford refers to his work frequently).

“A common Bible, of a good legible print (bound in russia). I have one; but as it was the last gift of my sister (whom I shall probably never see again), I can only use it carefully, and less frequently, because I like to keep it in good order. Don’t forget this, for I am a great reader and admirer of those books, and had read them through and through before I was eight years old,—that is to say, the Old Testament, for the New struck me as a task, but the other as a pleasure. I speak

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as a boy, from the recollected impression of that period at Aberdeen in 1796.

“Any novels of Scott, or poetry of the same. Ditto of Crabbe, Moore, and the Elect; but none of your curst common-place trash,—unless something starts up of actual merit, which may very well be, for ‘tis time it should.”

LETTER CCCCLXIII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

October 20th, 1821.

“If the errors are in the MS. write me down an ass: they are not, and I am content to undergo any penalty if they be. Besides, the omitted stanza (last but one or two), sent afterwards, was that in the MS. too?

“As to ‘honour,’ I will trust no man’s honour in affairs of barter. I will tell you why: a state of bargain is Hobbes’s ‘state of nature—a state of war.’ It is so with all men. If I come to a friend, and say, ‘Friend, lend me five hundred pounds,’—he either does it, or says that he can’t or won’t; but if I come to ditto, and say, ‘Ditto, I have an excellent house, or horse, or carriage, or MSS., or books, or pictures, or &c. &c. &c. &c. &c., honestly worth a thousand pounds, you shall have them for five hundred,’ what does Ditto say? why, he looks at them, he hums, he ha’s,—he humbugs, if he can, to get a bargain as cheaply as he can, because it is a bargain.—This is in the blood and bone of mankind; and the same man who would lend another a thousand pounds without interest, would not buy a horse of him for half its value if he could help it. It is so: there’s no denying it; and therefore I will have as much as I can, and you will give as little; and there’s an end. All men are intrinsical rascals, and I am only sorry that, not being a dog, I can’t bite them.

“I am filling another book for you with little anecdotes, to my own knowledge, or well authenticated, of Sheridan, Curran, &c. and such other public men as I recollect to have been acquainted with, for I knew

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most of them more or less. I will do what I can to prevent your losing by my obsequies.

“Yours, &c.”

LETTER CCCCLXIV.

TO MR. ROGERS.

“Ravenna, October 21st, 1821.

“I shall be (the gods willing) in Bologna on Saturday next. This is a curious answer to your letter; but I have taken a house in Pisa for the winter, to which all my chattels, furniture, horses, carriages, and live stock are already removed, and I am preparing to follow.

“The cause of this removal is, shortly, the exile or proscription of all my friends’ relations and connexions here into Tuscany, on account of our late politics; and where they go, I accompany them. I merely remained till now to settle some arrangements about my daughter, and to give time for my furniture, &c. to precede me. I have not here a seat or a bed hardly, except some jury chairs, and tables and a mattress for the week to come.

“If you will go on with me to Pisa, I can lodge you for as long as you like (they write that the house, the Palazzo Lanfranchi, is spacious: it is on the Arno); and I have four carriages, and as many saddle horses (such as they are in these parts), with all other conveniences at your command, as also their owner. If you could do this, we may, at least, cross the Apennines together; or if you are going by another road, we shall meet at Bologna, I hope. I address this to the post-office (as you desire), and you will probably find me at the Albergo di San Marco. If you arrive first, wait till I come up, which will be (barring accidents) on Saturday or Sunday at farthest.

“I presume you are alone in your voyages. Moore is in London incog. according to my latest advices from those climates.

“It is better than a lustre (five years and six months and some days, more or less) since we met; and, like the man from Tadcaster in

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the farce (’Love laughs at Locksmiths’) whose acquaintances, including the cat, and the terrier, ‘who caught a halfpenny in his mouth,’ were all ‘gone dead,’ but too many of our acquaintances have taken the same path. Lady Melbourne, Grattan, Sheridan, Curran, &c. &c. almost every body of much name of the old school. But ‘so am not I, said the foolish fat scullion,’ therefore let us make the most of our remainder.

“Let me find two lines from you at the hostel or inn.’

“Yours ever, &c.

B.”

LETTER CCCCLXV.

TO MR. MOORE.

“Ravenna, Oct. 28th, 1821.

“‘’Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,’ and in three hours more I have to set out on my way to Pisa—sitting up all night to be sure of rising. I have just made them take off my bed-clothes—blankets inclusive—in case of temptation from the apparel of sheets to my eyelids.

“Samuel Rogers is—or is to be—at Bologna, as he writes from Venice.

“I thought our Magnifico would ‘pound you,’ if possible. He is trying to ‘pound’ me, too; but I’ll specie the rogue—or, at least, I’ll have the odd shillings out of him in keen iambics.

“Your approbation of ‘Sardanapalus’ is agreeable, for more reasons than one. Hobhouse is pleased to think as you do of it, and so do some others—but the ‘Arimaspian,’ whom, like ‘a Gryphon in the wilderness,’ I will ‘follow for his gold,’ (as I exhorted you to do before) did or doth disparage it—‘stinting me in my sizings.’ His notable opinions on the ‘Foscari’ and ‘Cain’ he hath not as yet forwarded; or, at least, I have not yet received them, nor the proofs thereof, though promised by last post.

“I see the way that he and his Quarterly people are tending—they want a row with me, and they shall have it. I only regret that I am

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not in England for the nonce; as here, it is hardly fair ground for me, isolated and out of the way of prompt rejoinder and information as I am. But, though backed by all the corruption, and infamy, and patronage of their master rogues and slave renegadoes, if they do once rouse me up,

‘They had better gall the devil, Salisbury.’

“I have that for two or three of them, which they had better not move me to put in motion;—and yet, after all, what a fool I am to disquiet myself about such fellows! It was all very well ten or twelve years ago, when I was a ‘curled darling,’ and minded such things. At present, I rate them at their true value; but, from natural temper and bile, am not able to keep quiet.

“Let me hear from you on your return from Ireland, which ought to be ashamed to see you, after her Brunswick blarney. I am of Longman’s opinion, that you should allow your friends to liquidate the Bermuda claim. Why should you throw away the two thousand pounds (of the non-guinea Murray) upon that cursed piece of treacherous inveiglement? I think you carry the matter a little too far and scrupulously. When we see patriots begging publicly, and know that Grattan received a fortune from his country, I really do not see why a man, in no whit inferior to any or all of them, should shrink from accepting that assistance from his private friends, which every tradesman receives from his connexions upon much less occasions. For, after all, it was not your debt—it was a piece of swindling against you. As to * * * *, and the ‘what noble creatures†! &c. &c.,’ it is all very fine and very well, but, till you can persuade me that there is no credit, and no self-applause to be obtained by being of use to a celebrated man, I must retain the same opinion of the human species, which I do of our friend Mr. Specie.”

† I had mentioned to him, with all the praise and gratitude such friendship deserved, some generous offers of aid which, from more than one quarter, I had received at this period, and which, though declined, have been not the less warmly treasured in my recollection.

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In the month of August, Madame Guiccioli had joined her father at Pisa, and was now superintending the preparations. at the Casa Lanfranchi,—one of the most ancient and spacious palaces of that city,—for the reception of her noble lover. “He left Ravenna,” says this lady, “with great regret, and with a presentiment that his departure would be the forerunner of a thousand evils to us. In every letter he then wrote to me, he expressed his displeasure at this step. ‘If your father should be recalled,’ he said, ‘I immediately return to Ravenna; and if he is recalled previous to my departure, I remain.’ In this hope he delayed his journey for several months; but at last, no longer having any expectation of our immediate return, he wrote to me, saying—’I set out most unwillingly, foreseeing the most evil results for all of you, and principally for yourself. I say no more, but you will see.’ And in another letter he says: ‘I leave Ravenna so unwillingly, and with such a persuasion on my mind that my departure will lead from one misery to another, each greater than the former, that I have not the heart to utter another word on the subject.’ He always wrote to me at that time in Italian, and I transcribe his exact words. How entirely were these presentiments verified by the event*!”

After describing his mode of life while at Ravenna, the lady thus proceeds.

“This sort of simple life he led until the fatal day of his departure for Greece, and the few variations he made from it may be said to have arisen solely from the greater or smaller number of occasions which were offered him of doing good, and from the generous actions he was

* “Egil era partito con molto riverescimento da Ravenna, e col pressentimento che la sua partenza da Ravenna ci sarebbe cagione di molti mali. In ogni lettera che egli mi scriveva allora egli mi esprimeva il suo dispiacere di lasciare Ravenna. ‘Se papà è richiamento (mi scriveva egli) io torno in quel istante a Ravenna, e se è richiamato prima della mia partenza, io non parto.’ In questa speranza egli differì varii mesi a pertire. Ma, finalmente, non potendo più sperare il nostro ritorno prossimo, egli mi scriveva—’Io parte molto mal volontieri prevedendo dei mali assai grandi per vol altri e massime per voi; altro non dico,—lo vedrete.’ E in un altra lettera, ‘Io lascio Ravenna così mal volontieri, e così persuaso che la mia partenza non può che condurre da un male ad un altro più grande che non ho cuore di scrivere altro in questo punto.’ Egli mi scriveva allora sempre in Italiano e trascrivo le sue precise parole—ma come quei suoi pressentimenti ai verificarono poi in appresso!”

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continually performing. Many families (in Ravenna principally) owed to him the few prosperous days they ever enjoyed. His arrival in that town was spoken of as a piece of public good fortune, and his departure as a public calamity; and this is the life which many attempted to asperse as that of a libertine. But the world must at last learn how, with so good and generous a heart, Lord Byron, susceptible, it is true, of the most energetic passions, yet, at the same time, of the sublimest and most pure, and rendering homage in his acts to every virtue—how he, I say, could afford such scope to malice and to calumny. Circumstances, and also, probably, an eccentricity of disposition (which, nevertheless, had its origin in a virtuous feeling, an excessive abhorrence for hypocrisy and affectation), contributed perhaps to cloud the splendour of his exalted nature in the opinion of many. But you will well know how to analyse these contradictions in a manner worthy of your noble friend and of yourself, and you will prove that the goodness of his heart was not inferior to the grandeur of his genius*.”

At Bologna, according to the appointment made between them, Lord Byron and Mr. Rogers met; and the record which this latter gentleman has, in his Poem on Italy, preserved of their meeting conveys so vivid a picture of the poet at this period, with, at the same time, so just and feeling a tribute to his memory, that, narrowed as my limits are now becoming, I cannot refrain from giving the sketch entire.

“BOLOGNA. “’Twas night; the noise and bustle of the day Were o’er. The mountebank no longer wrought Miraculous cures—he and his stage were gone; And he who, when the crisis of his tale Came, and all stood breathless with hope and fear, Sent round his cap; and he who thrumm’d his wire And sang, with pleading look and plaintive strain Melting the passenger. Thy thousand cries†,

---

* The leaf that contains the original of this extract I have unluckily mislaid.

† “See the Cries of Bologna, as drawn by Annibal Caracci. He was of very humble origin; and, to correct his brother’s vanity, once sent him a portrait of their father, the tailor, threading his needle.”

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So well pourtray’d and by a son of thine, Whose voice had swell’d the hubbub in his youth, Were hush’d, Bologna, silence in the streets, The squares, when dark, the clattering of fleet hoofs; And soon a courier, posting as from far, Housing and holster, boot and belted coat And doublet, stain’d with many a various soil, Stopt and alighted. ‘Twas where hangs aloft That ancient sign, the Pilgrim, welcoming All who arrive there, all perhaps save those Clad like himself, with staff and scallop-shell, Those on a pilgrimage: and now approach’d Wheels, through the lofty porticoes resounding, Arch beyond arch, a shelter or a shade As the sky changes. To the gate they came; And, ere the man had half his story done, Mine host received the Master—one long used To sojourn among strangers, every where (Go where he would, along the wildest track) Flinging a charm that shall not soon be lost, And leaving footsteps to be traced by those Who love the haunts of Genius; one who saw, Observed, nor shunn’d the busy scenes of life, But mingled not; and mid the din, the stir, Lived as a separate Spirit. Much had pass’d Since last we parted; and those five short years— Much had they told! His clustering locks were turn’d Gray; nor did aught recall the Youth that swam From Sestos to Abydos. Yet his voice, Still it was sweet; still from his eye the thought Flashed lightning-like, nor lingered on the way, Waiting for words. Far, far into the night We sat, conversing—no unwelcome hour, The hour we met; and, when Aurora rose, Rising, we climb’d the rugged Apennine. Well I remember how the golden sun Fill’d with its beams the unfathomable gulfs, As on we travell’d, and along the ridge, ‘Mid groves of cork, and cistus, and wild fig, His motley household came.—Not last nor least, Battista, who upon the moonlight-sea

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Of Venice had so ably, zealously Served, and at parting thrown his oar away To follow through the world; who without stain Had worn so long that honourable badge,* The gondolier’s, in a Patrician House Arguing unlimited trust.—Not last nor least, Thou, though declining in thy beauty and strength, Faithful Moretto, to the latest hour Guarding his chamber-door, and now along The silent, sullen strand of Missolonghi Howling in grief. He had just left that Place Of old renown, once in the Adrian Sea†, Ravenna; where from Dante’s sacred tomb He had so oft, as many a verse declares‡, Drawn inspiration; where, at twilight-time, Through the pine-forest wandering with loose rein, Wandering and lost, he had so oft beheld§ (What is not visible to a poet’s eye?) The spectre-knight, the hell-hounds, and their prey, The chase, the slaughter, and the festal mirth Suddenly blasted. ‘Twas a theme he loved, But others claim’d their turn; and many a tower, Shatter’d, uprooted from its native rock, Its strength the pride of some heroic age, Appear’d and vanish’d (many a sturdy steer‖ Yoked and unyoked), while, as in happier days, He pour’d his spirit forth. The past forgot, All was enjoyment. Not a cloud obscured Present or future. He is now at rest; And praise and blame fall on his ear alike, Now dull in death. Yea, Byron, thou art gone, Gone like a star that through the firmament Shot and was lost, in its eccentric course Dazzling, perplexing. Yet thy heart, methinks,

* “The principal gondolier, il fante di poppa, was almost always in the confidence of his master, and employed on occasions that required judgment and address.”

† “Adrianum mare.—Cicero.” ‡ “See the Prophecy of Dante.”

§ “See the tale as told by Boccaccio and Dryden.”

‖ “They wait for the traveller’s carriage at the foot of every hill.”

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Was generous, noble—noble in its scorn Of all things low or little; nothing there Sordid or servile. If imagined wrongs Pursued thee, urging thee sometimes to do Things long regretted, oft, as many know, None more than I, thy gratitude would build On alight foundations: and, if in thy life Not happy, in thy death thou surely wert, Thy wish accomplish’d; dying in the land Where thy young mind had caught ethereal fire, Dying in Greece, and in a cause so glorious! They in thy train—ah, little did they think, As round we went, that they so soon should sit Mourning beside thee, while a Nation mourn’d, Changing her festal for her funeral song; That they so soon should hear the minute-gun, As morning gleam’d on what remain’d of thee, Roll o’er the sea, the mountains, numbering Thy years of joy and sorrow. Thou art gone; And he who would assail thee in thy grave, Oh, let him pause! For who among us all, Tried as thou wert—even from thine earliest years, When wandering, yet unspoilt, a highland-boy— Tried as thou wert, and with thy soul of flame; Pleasure, while yet the down was on thy cheek, Uplifting, pressing, and to lips like thine, Her charmed cup—ah, who among us all Could say he had not err’d as much, and more?”

On the road to Bologna he had met with his early and dearest friend, Lord Clare, and the following description of their short interview is given in his “Detached Thoughts.”

“Pisa, November 5th, 1821.

“‘There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the little things of this world, Sancho,’ says Sterne in a letter (if I mistake not), and so I have often found it

“Page 128, article 91, of this collection I had alluded to my friend Lord Clare in terms such as my feelings suggested. About a week or

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two afterwards, I met him on the road between Imola and Bologna, after not having met for seven or eight years. He was abroad in 1814, and came home just as I set out in 1816.

“This meeting annihilated for a moment all the years between the present time and the days of Harrow. It was a new and inexplicable feeling, like rising from the grave, to me. Clare too was much agitated—more in appearance than was myself; for I could feel his heart beat to his fingers’ ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own which made me think so. He told me that I should find a note from him left at Bologna. I did. We were obliged to part; for our different journeys, he for Rome, I for Pisa, but with the promise to meet again in spring. We were but five minutes together, and on the public road; but I hardly recollect an hour of my existence which could be weighed against them. He had heard that I was coming on, and had left his letter for me at Bologna, because the people with whom he was travelling could not wait longer.

“Of all I have ever known, he has always been the least altered in every thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for society (or the world, as it is called) to leave a being with so little of the leaven of bad passions.

“I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever heard of him from others, during absence and distance.”

After remaining a day at Bologna, Lord Byron crossed the Apennines with Mr. Rogers; and I find the following note of their visit together to the Gallery at Florence.

“I revisited the Florence Gallery, &c. My former impressions were confirmed; but there were too many visitors there to allow one to feel any thing properly. When we were (about thirty or forty) all stuffed into the cabinet of gems and knick-knackeries, in a corner of one of the galleries, I told Rogers that it ‘felt like being in the watch-house.’ I left him to make his obeisances to some of his acquaintances, and strolled on alone—the only four minutes I could snatch of any feeling for the

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works around me. I do not mean to apply this to a tête-à-tête scrutiny with Rogers, who has an excellent taste, and deep feeling for the arts (indeed much more of both than I can possess, for of the former I have not much), but to the crowd of jostling starers and travelling talkers around me.

“I heard one bold Briton declare to the woman on his arm, looking at the Venus of Titian, ‘Well, now, this is really very fine indeed’—an observation which, like that of the landlord in Joseph Andrews on ‘the certainty of death,’ was (as the landlord’s wife observed) ‘extremely true.’

“In the Pitti Palace, I did not omit Goldsmith’s prescription for a connoisseur, viz. ‘that the pictures would have been better if the painter had taken more pains, and to praise the works of Pietro Perugino.’”

LETTER CCCCLXVI.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Pisa, November 3d, 1821.

“The two passages cannot be altered without making Lucifer talk like the Bishop of Lincoln, which would not be in the character of the former. The notion is from Cuvier (that of the old worlds), as I have explained in an additional note to the preface. The other passage is also in character: if nonsense, so much the better, because then it can do no harm, and the sillier Satan is made, the safer for every body. As to ‘alarms,’ &c. do you really think such things ever led any body astray? Are these people more impious than Milton’s Satan? or the Prometheus of Æschylus? or even than the Sadducees of * *, the ‘Fall of Jerusalem’ * *? Are not Adam, Eve, Adah, and Abel, as pious as the catechism?

“Gifford is too wise a man to think that such things can have any serious effect: who was ever altered by a poem? I beg leave to observe, that there is no creed nor personal hypothesis of mine in all this; but I was obliged to make Cain and Lucifer talk consistently, and surely this has always been permitted to poesy. Cain is a proud man: if Lucifer promised him kingdom, &c. it would elate him: the object of the Demon is to depress him still further in his own estimation than he was before, by

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showing him infinite things and his own abasement, till he falls into the frame of mind that leads to the catastrophe, from mere internal irritation, not premeditation, or envy of Abel (which would have made him contemptible), but from rage and fury against the inadequacy of his state to his conceptions, and which discharges itself rather against life, and the author of life, than the mere living.

“His subsequent remorse is the natural effect of looking on his sudden deed. Had the deed been premeditated, his repentance would have been tardier.

“Either dedicate it to Walter Scott, or if you think he would like the dedication of ‘the Foscaris’ better, put the dedication to ‘the Foscaris.’ Ask him which.

“Your first note was queer enough; but your two other letters, with Moore’s and Gifford’s opinions, set all right again. I told you before that I can never recast any thing. I am like the tiger: if I miss the first spring I go grumbling back to my jungle again; but if I do hit, it is crushing.
* * * You disparaged the last three cantos to me, and kept them back above a year; but I have heard from England that (notwithstanding the errors of the press) they are well thought of; for instance, by American Irving, which last is a feather in my (fool’s) cap.

“You have received my letter (open) through Mr. Kinnaird, and so, pray, send me no more reviews of any kind. I will read no more of evil or good in that line. Walter Scott has not read a review of himself for thirteen years.

“The bust is not my property, but Hobhouse’s. I addressed it to you as an Admiralty man, great at the custom-house. Pray deduct the expenses of the same, and all others.

“Yours, &c.”

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LETTER CCCCLXVII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Pisa, Nov. 9th, 1821.

“I never read the Memoirs at all, not even since they were written; and I never will: the pain of writing them was enough; you may spare me that of a perusal. Mr. Moore has (or may have) a discretionary power to omit any repetition, or expressions which do not seem good to him, who is a better judge than you or I.

“Enclosed is a lyrical drama (entitled ‘a Mystery’ from its subject), which, perhaps, may arrive in time for the volume. You will find it pious enough, I trust,—at least some of the Chorus might have been written by Sternhold and Hopkins themselves for that, and perhaps for melody. As it is longer, and more lyrical and Greek, than I intended at first, I have not divided it into acts, but called what I have sent Part First, as there is a suspension of the action, which may either close there without impropriety, or be continued in a way that I have in view. I wish the first part to be published before the second, because, if it don’t succeed, it is better to stop there than to go on in a fruitless experiment.

“I desire you to acknowledge the arrival of this packet by return of post, if you can conveniently, with a proof.

“Your obedient, &c.

“P.S. My wish is to have it published at the same time, and, if possible, in the same volume, with the others, because, whatever the merits or demerits of these pieces may be, it will perhaps be allowed that each is of a different kind, and in a different style; so that, including the prose and the Don Juans, &c., I have at least sent you variety during the last year or two.”

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LETTER CCCCLXVIII.

TO MR. MOORE.

“Pisa, November 16th, 1821.

“There is here Mr. * *, an Irish genius, with whom we are acquainted. He hath written a really excellent Commentary on Dante, full of new and true information, and much ingenuity. But his verse is such as it hath pleased God to endue him withal. Nevertheless, he is so firmly persuaded of its equal excellence, that he won’t divorce the Commentary from the traduction as I ventured delicately to hint,—not having the fear of Ireland before my eyes, and upon the presumption of having shotten very well in his presence (with common pistols too, not with my Manton’s) the day before.

“But he is eager to publish all, and must be gratified, though the Reviewers will make him suffer more tortures than there are in his original. Indeed, the Notes are well worth publication; but he insists upon the translation for company, so that they will come out together, like Lady C * * t chaperoning Miss * *. I read a letter of yours to him yesterday, and he begs me to write to you about his Poeshie. He is really a good fellow, apparently, and I dare say that his verse is very good Irish.

“Now, what shall we do for him? He says that he will risk part of the expense with the publisher. He will never rest till he is published and abused—for he has a high opinion of himself—and I see nothing left but to gratify him so as to have him abused as little as possible; for I think it would kill him. You must write, then, to Jeffrey to beg him not to review him and I will do the same to Gifford, through Murray. Perhaps they might notice the Comment without touching the text. But I doubt the dogs—the text is too tempting. * * * *.

“I have to thank you again, as I believe I did before, for your opinion of ‘Cain,’ &c.

“You are right to allow —— to settle the claim; but I do not

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see why you should repay him out of your legacy—at least, not yet*. If you feel about it (as you are ticklish on such points) pay him the interest now, and the principal when you are strong in cash; or pay him by instalments; or pay him as I do my creditors—that is, not till they make me.

“I address this to you at Paris, as you desire. Reply soon, and believe me ever, &c.

“P.S. What I wrote to you about low spirits is, however, very true. At present, owing to the climate, &c. (I can walk down into my garden, and pluck my own oranges; and, by the way, have got a diarrhoea in consequence of indulging in this meridian luxury of proprietorship), my spirits are much better. You seem to think that I could not have written the ‘Vision,’ &c. under the influence of low spirits;—but I think there you err†. A man’s poetry is a distinct faculty, or Soul, and has no more to do with the every-day individual than the Inspiration with the Pythoness when removed from her tripod.”

The correspondence which I am now about to insert, though long since published by the gentleman with whom it originated‡, will, I have no doubt, even by those already acquainted with all the circumstances, be reperused with pleasure; as, among the many strange and affecting incidents with which these pages abound, there is not one, perhaps, so touching and singular as that to which the following letters refer.

* Having discovered that, while I was abroad, a kind friend had, without any communication with myself, placed at the disposal of the person who acted for me a large sum for the discharge of this claim, I thought it right to allow the money, thus generously destined, to be employed as was intended, and then immediately repaid my friend out of the sum given by Mr. Murray for the manuscript. It may seem obtrusive, I fear, to enter into this sort of personal details; but, without some few words of explanation, such passages as the above would be unintelligible.

† My remark has been hasty and inconsiderate, and Lord Byron’s is the view borne out by all experience. Almost all the tragic and gloomy writers have been, in social life, mirthful persons. The author of the Night Thoughts was a “fellow of infinite jest;” and of the pathetic Rowe, Pope says—“He! why, he would laugh all day long—he would do nothing else but laugh.”

‡ See “Thoughts on Private Devotion,” by Mr. Sheppard.

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TO LORD BYRON.

“Frome, Somerset, November 21st, 1821.

“MY LORD,

“More than two years since, a lovely and beloved wife was taken from me, by lingering disease, after a very short union. She possessed unvarying gentleness and fortitude, and a piety so retiring as rarely to disclose itself in words, but so influential as to produce uniform benevolence of conduct. In the last hour of life, after a farewell look on a lately born and only infant, for whom she had evinced inexpressible affection, her last whispers were, ‘God’s happiness! God’s happiness!’ Since the second anniversary of her decease, I have read some papers which no one had seen during her life, and which contain her most secret thoughts. I am induced to communicate to your lordship a passage from these papers, which, there is no doubt, refers to yourself; as I have more than once heard the writer mention your agility on the rocks at Hastings.

“’Oh, my God, I take encouragement from the assurance of thy word, to pray to Thee in behalf of one for whom I have lately been much interested. May the person to whom I allude (and who is now, we fear, as much distinguished for his neglect of Thee as for the transcendent talents thou hast bestowed on him), be awakened to a sense of his own danger, and led to seek that peace of mind in a proper sense of religion, which he has found this world’s enjoyments unable to procure! Do Thou grant that his future example may be productive of far more extensive benefit than his past conduct and writings have been of evil; and may the sun of righteousness, which, we trust, will, at some future period, arise on him, be bright in proportion to the darkness of those clouds which guilt has raised around him, and the balm which it bestows, healing and soothing in proportion to the keenness of that agony which the punishment of his vices has inflicted on him! May the hope that the sincerity of my own efforts for the attainment of holiness, and the approval of my own love to the great Author of religion, will render this prayer, and every other for the welfare of mankind, more efficacious.

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—Cheer me in the path of duty;—but, let me not forget, that, while we are permitted to animate ourselves to exertion by every innocent motive, these are but the lesser streams which may serve to increase the current, but which, deprived of the grand fountain of good (a deep conviction of inborn sin, and firm belief in the efficacy of Christ’s death for the salvation of those who trust in him, and really wish to serve him,) would soon dry up, and leave us barren of every virtue as before.’

‘July 31st, 1814.

  ‘Hastings.’

“There is nothing, my lord, in this extract which, in a literary sense, can at all interest you; but it may, perhaps, appear to you worthy of reflection how deep and expansive a concern for the happiness of others the Christian faith can awaken in the midst of youth and prosperity. Here is nothing poetical and splendid, as in the expostulatory homage of M. Delamartine; but here is the sublime, my lord; for this intercession was offered, on your account, to the supreme source of happiness. It sprang from a faith more confirmed than that of the French poet; and from a charity which, in combination with faith, showed its power unimpaired amidst the languors and pains of approaching dissolution. I will hope that a prayer, which, I am sure, was deeply sincere, may not be always unavailing.

“It would add nothing, my lord, to the fame with which your genius has surrounded you, for an unknown and obscure individual to express his admiration of it. I had rather be numbered with those who wish and pray, that ‘wisdom from above,’ and ‘peace,’ and ‘joy,’ may enter such a mind.

“John Sheppard.”

However romantic, in the eyes of the cold and worldly, the piety of this young person may appear, it were to be wished that the truly Christian feeling which dictated her prayer were more common among all who profess the same creed; and that those indications of a better nature, so visible even through the clouds of his character, which induced this innocent young woman to pray for Byron, while living, could have the effect

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of inspiring others with more charity towards his memory, now that he is dead.

The following is Lord Byron’s answer to this affecting communication.

LETTER CCCCLXIX.

TO MR. SHEPPARD.

“Pisa, December 8th, 1821.

SIR,

“I have received your letter. I need not say, that the extract which it contains has affected me, because it would imply a want of all feeling to have read it with indifference. Though I am not quite sure that it was intended by the writer for me, yet the date, the place where it was written, with some other circumstances that you mention, render the allusion probable. But for whomever it was meant, I have read it with all the pleasure which can arise from so melancholy a topic. I say pleasure—because your brief and simple picture of the life and demeanour of the excellent person whom I trust you will again meet, cannot be contemplated without the admiration due to her virtues, and her pure and unpretending piety. Her last moments were particularly striking; and I do not know that, in the course of reading the story of mankind, and still less in my observations upon the existing portion, I ever met with any thing so unostentatiously beautiful. Indisputably, the firm believers in the gospel have a great advantage over all others,—for this simple reason, that, if true, they will have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can be but with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the assistance of an exalted hope, through life, without subsequent disappointment, since (at the worst for them) ‘out of nothing, nothing can arise,’ not even sorrow. But a man’s creed does not depend upon himself: who can say, I will believe this, that, or the other? and least of all, that which he least can comprehend. I have, however, observed, that those who have begun life with extreme faith, have in the end greatly narrowed it, as Chillingworth, Clarke (who ended as an Arian), Bayle, and Gibbon (once a Catholic), and some others; while, on

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563

the other hand, nothing is more common than for the early sceptic to end in a firm belief, like Maupertuis, and Henry Kirke White.

“But my business is to acknowledge your letter, and not to make a dissertation. I am obliged to you for your good wishes, and more than obliged by the extract from the papers of the beloved object whose qualities you have so well described in a few words. I can assure you that all the fame which ever cheated humanity into higher notions of its own importance would never weigh in my mind against the pure and pious interest which a virtuous being may he pleased to take in my we!fare. In this point of view, I would not exchange the prayer of the deceased in my behalf for the united glory of Homer, Cæsar, and Napoleon, could such be accumulated upon a living head. Do me at least the justice to suppose, that

‘Video meliora proboque,’

however the ‘deteriora sequor’ may have been applied to my conduct.

“I have the honour to be
“your obliged and obedient servant,

“Byron.

“P.S. I do not know that I am addressing a clergyman; but I presume that you will not be affronted by the mistake (if it is one) on the address of this letter. One who has so well explained, and deeply felt the doctrines of religion, will excuse the error which led me to believe him its minister.”

LETTER CCCCLXX.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Pisa, December 4th, 1821.

“By extracts in the English papers,—in your holy ally, Galignani’s ‘Messenger,’—I perceive that ‘the two greatest examples of human vanity in the present age’ are, firstly, ‘the ex-Emperor Napoleon,’ and, secondly, ‘his lordship, &c., the noble poet,’ meaning your humble servant, ‘poor guiltless I.’

“Poor Napoleon! he little dreamed to what vile comparisons the turn of the wheel would reduce him!

564

NOTICES OF THE

A. D. 1821.

“I have got here into a famous old feudal palazzo on the Arno, large enough for a garrison, with dungeons below and cells in the walls, and so full of ghosts that the learned Fletcher (my valet) has begged leave to change his room, and then refused to occupy his new room, because there were more ghosts there than in the other. It is quite true that there are most extraordinary noises (as in all old buildings), which have terrified the servants so as to incommode me extremely. There is one place where people were evidently walled up, for there is but one possible passage, broken through the wall, and then meant to be closed again upon the inmate. The house belonged to the Lanfranchi family (the same mentioned by Ugolino in his dream, as his persecutor with Sismondi), and has had a fierce owner or two in its time. The staircase, &c. is said to have been built by Michel Agnolo. It is not yet cold enough for a fire. What a climate!

“I am, however, bothered about these spectres (as they say the last occupants were, too), of whom I have as yet seen nothing, nor, indeed, heard (myself); but all the other ears have been regaled by all kinds of supernatural sounds. The first night I thought I heard an odd noise, but it has not been repeated. I have now been here more than a month.

“Yours, &c.”

LETTER CCCCLXXI.

TO MR. MURRAY.

“Pisa, December 10th, 1821.

“This day and this hour (one, on the clock,) my daughter is six years old. I wonder when I shall see her again, or if ever I shall see her at all.

“I have remarked a curious coincidence, which almost looks like a fatality.

“My mother, my wife, my daughter, my half-sister, my sister’s mother, my natural daughter (as far at least as I am concerned), and myself, are all only children.

“My father, by his first marriage with Lady Conyers (an only child), had only my sister; and by his second marriage with an only

A. D. 1821.

LIFE OF LORD BYRON.

565

child, an only child again. Lady Byron, as you know, was one also, and so is my daughter, &c.

“Is not this rather odd—such a complication of only children? By the way, send me my daughter Ada’s miniature. I have only the print, which gives little or no idea of her complexion.

“Yours, &c.

“B.”

LETTER CCCCLXXII.

TO MR. MOORE.

“Pisa, December 12th, 1821.

“What you say about Galignani’s two biographies is very amusing; and, if I were not lazy, I would certainly do what you desire. But I doubt my present stock of facetiousness—that is, of good serious humour, so as not to let the cat out of the bag†. I wish you would undertake it. I will forgive and indulge you (like a Pope) beforehand, for any thing ludicrous, that might keep those fools in their own dear belief that a man is a loup garou.

“I suppose I told you that the Giaour story had actually some foundation on facts; or, if I did not, you will one day find it in a letter of Lord Sligo’s, written to me after the publication of the poem. I should not like marvels to rest upon any account of my own, and shall say nothing about it. However, the real incident is still remote enough from the poetical one, being just such as, happening to a man of any imagination, might suggest such a composition. The worst of any real adventures is that they involve living people—else Mrs. ——’s, ——’s, &c. are as ‘German to the matter’ as Mr. Maturin could desire for his novels. * * * * * * * *.

566

NOTICES OF THE

A. D. 1821.

“The consummation you mentioned for poor * * was near taking place yesterday. Riding pretty sharply after Mr. Medwin and myself, in turning the corner of a lane between Pisa and the hills, he was spilt,—and, besides losing some claret on the spot, bruised himself a good deal, but is in no danger. He was bled and keeps his room. As I was a-head of him some hundred yards, I did not see the accident; but my servant, who was behind, did, and says the horse did not fall—the usual excuse of floored equestrians. As * * piques himself upon his horsemanship, and his horse is really a pretty horse enough, I long for his personal narrative,—as I never yet met the man who would fairly claim a tumble as his own property.

“Could not you send me a printed copy of the ‘Irish Avatar?’—I do not know what has become of Rogers since we parted at Florence.

“Don’t let the Angles keep you from writing. Sam told me that you were somewhat dissipated in Paris, which I can easily believe. Let me hear from you at your best leisure.

“Ever and truly, &c.

“P.S. December 13th.

“I enclose you some lines written not long ago, which you may do what you like with, as they are very harmless†. Only, if copied, or printed, or set, I could wish it more correctly than in the usual way, in which one’s ‘nothings are monstered’ as Coriolanus says.

“You must really get * * published—he never will rest till he is so. He is just gone with his broken head to Lucca, at my desire, to try

† The following are the lines enclosed in this letter. In one of his Journals, where they are also given, he has subjoined to them the following note:—“I composed these stanzas (except the fourth, added now) a few days ago, on the road from Florence to Pisa. “Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story; The days of our youth are the days of our glory; And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty. “What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled? ‘Tis but as a dead-flower with May-dew besprinkled. Then away with all such from the head that is hoary! What care I for the wreaths that can only give glory?

A. D. 1821.

LIFE OF LORD BYRON.

567

to save a man from being burnt. The Spanish * * *, that has her petticoats over Lucca, had actually condemned a poor devil to the stake, for stealing the wafer-box out of a church. Shelley and I, of course, were up in arms against this piece of piety, and have been disturbing every body to get the sentence changed. * * is gone to see what can be done.

“B.”

LETTER CCCCLXXIII.

TO MR. SHELLEY.

“December 12th, 1821.

“MY DEAR SHELLEY,

“Enclosed is a note for you from ——. His reasons are all very true, I dare say, and it might and may be of personal inconvenience to us. But that does not appear to me to be a reason to allow a being to be burnt without trying to save him. To save him by any means but remonstrance, is of course out of the question; but I do not see why a temperate remonstrance should hurt any one. Lord Guilford is the man, if he would undertake it. He knows the Grand Duke personally, and might, perhaps, prevail upon him to interfere. But, as he goes to-morrow, you must be quick, or it will be useless. Make any use of my name that you please.

“Yours ever, &c.”

568

NOTICES OF THE

A. D. 1821.

LETTER CCCCLXXIV.

TO MR. MOORE.

“I send you the two notes, which will tell you the story I allude to of the Auto da Fè. Shelley’s allusion to his ‘fellow-serpent’ is a buffoonery of mine. Goëthe’s Mephistofilus calls the serpent who tempted Eve ‘my aunt, the renowned snake;’ and I always insist that Shelley is nothing but one of her nephews, walking about on the tip of his tail.”

TO LORD BYRON.

“2 o’clock, Tuesday Morning.

“MY DEAR LORD,

“Although strongly persuaded that the story must be either an entire fabrication, or so gross an exaggeration as to be nearly so; yet, in order to be able to discover the truth beyond all doubt, and to set your mind quite at rest, I have taken the determination to go myself to Lucca this morning. Should it prove less false than I am convinced it is, I shall not fail to exert myself in every way that I can imagine may have any success. Be assured of this.

Your lordship’s most truly,

“ * *.

“P.S. To prevent bavardage, I prefer going in person to sending my servant with a letter. It is better for you to mention nothing (except, of course, to Shelley) of my excursion. The person I visit there is one on whom I can have every dependence in every way, both as to authority and truth.”

TO LORD BYRON.

“Thursday Morning.

“MY DEAR LORD BYRON,

“I hear this morning that the design, which certainly had been in contemplation, of burning my fellow-serpent, has been abandoned, and that he has been condemned to the galleys. Lord Guilford is at

A. D. 1822.

LIFE OF LORD BYRON.

569

Leghorn; and as your courier applied to me to know whether he ought to leave your letter for him or not, I have thought it best since this information to tell him to take it back.

“Ever faithfully yours,

“P. B. Shelley.”

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Augustus, Emperor of Rome (63 BC-14 AD) Emperor of Rome from 31 BC; he was the patron of Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and Livy.

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George Bankes (1787-1856) The son of Henry Bankes, MP, and younger brother of Byron's Cambridge friend William; he was a bankruptcy commissioner and Tory MP for Corfe Castle (1822-23, 1826-32).

William John Bankes (1786-1855) Byron's Cambridge friend; the son of Henry Bankes, MP, he was MP for Truro, Cambridge, Marlborough, and Dorset, and an Egyptian traveller who translated Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Giovanni Finati 2 vols (1830).

Sir John Barrow, first baronet (1764-1848) English traveler, secretary of the Admiralty, and author of over two hundred articles in the Quarterly Review; he is remembered for his Mutiny on the Bounty (1831).

Allen Bathurst, first earl Bathurst (1684-1775) Tory politician and friend of Bishop Atterbury and Alexander Pope, who dedicated to him his third Moral Essay on the use of riches.

Walter Bathurst (1764 c.-1827) English naval officer, skipper of the Salsette frigate during Byron's first journey to Greece. He was killed at the battle of Navarino.

Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) Huguenot philosopher; author of Dictionnaire historique et critique, 2 vols (1697), 4 vols (1702).

Francis Beaumont (1585-1616) English playwright, often in collaboration with John Fletcher; author of The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607).

Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778-1823) Italian traveler; his Narrative of the Operations and recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia (1820) was published by Murray.

Countess Marina Querini Benzon [née Chiara] (1757-1839) Venetian hostess at whose conversazione Byron met Terese Guiccioli.

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Thomas Betterton (1635-1710) English actor who performed in plays by Congreve, Vanbrugh and Nicholas Rowe, and supplied Rowe with anecdotes of Shakespeare.

Sir Richard Blackmore (1654-1729) Physician, poet, and critic who was the subject of much abuse among the wits; he was author of Prince Arthur: an Heroick Poem in Ten Books (1695) and several other epics allegorizing Whig doctrines.

Martha Blount (1690-1763) Alexander Pope's intimate friend, to whom he left a substantial legacy.

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) Italian humanist, author of the Decameron.

Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland (1778-1846) Brother of Napoleon and king of Holland from 1806 to 1810, when he was deposed. He spent his later years in Italy.

Magdalene Bowles [née Wake] (1843 fl.) Daughter of the Rev. Charles Wake, D.D. Prebendary of Westminster; she married the poet William Lisle Bowles in 1797; published tracts including Characters and Incidents of Village Life, mostly founded on Fact (1832). She predeceased her husband.

William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850) English poet and critic; author of Fourteen Sonnets, elegiac and descriptive, written during a Tour (1789), editor of the Works of Alexander Pope, 10 vols (1806), and writer of pamphlets contributing to the subsequent Pope controversy.

Richard Boyle, third earl of Burlington (1694-1753) Architect, connoisseur, and patron; Alexander Pope visited him at his villa at Chiswick.

John Braham (1777 c.-1856) English tenor who began his career at the Covent Garden and Drury Lane theaters; he assisted Isaac Nathan in setting Byron's Hebrew Melodies.

Howe Peter Browne, second marquis of Sligo (1788-1845) Son of John Denis Browne, first Marquess of Sligo; he was a college acquaintance Byron encountered in Athens.

Jacob Bryant (1717-1804) English antiquary and classical scholar; author of A New System, or, an Analysis of Ancient Mythology, 3 vols (1774-76) and A Dissertation Concerning the War of Troy (1796).

Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (1707-1788) French natural philosopher, author of Histoire naturelle genéralé et particulière (1749-1804) and an address to the French Academy, Discours sur le style (1753).

Michaelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) Italian painter, poet, sculptor, and architect.

Robert Burns (1759-1796) Scottish poet and song collector; author of Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786).

Robert Burton (1577-1640) English clergyman and satirist; author of The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).

Ada King, countess of Lovelace [née Byron] (1815-1852) Byron's daughter by Lady Byron; in 1835 she married William King, eighth Baron King of Ockham (1805-1893), afterwards earl of Lovelace.

Allegra Byron (1817-1822) Byron's illegitimate daughter by Claire Clairmont.

Amelia Byron, baroness Darcy (de Knayth) [née Darcy] (1754-1784) Daughter and heir of Robert D'Arcy, fourth earl of Holdernesse; in 1773 she married Francis Osborne, marquess of Carmarthen, who divorced her following her affair with Captain John Byron whom she married in 1779. She was the mother of Augusta Byron, the poet's half-sister.

Anne Isabella Noel Byron [née Milbanke] [Annabella] (1792-1860) The only child of Sir Ralph Milbanke; married Byron in 1815, separating shortly after the birth of their daughter Ada in January 1816.

Catherine Byron [née Gordon] (1764-1811) Byron's mother, who married Capt. John Byron 12 May 1785.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) The author of Childe Harold and Don Juan.

John Byron [Mad Jack] (1756-1791) The son of Admiral John Byron; he was the father of Lord Byron, and of Augusta Byron by a prior marriage with Amelia Darcy, Baroness Darcy (1754-84).

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Antonio Canova (1757-1822) Italian neoclassical sculptor who worked at Rome.

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Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) Italian baroque painter who with other members of his family founded an academy in Bologna.

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Guido Cavalcanti (1260 c.-1300) Italian lyric poet who influenced Dante; his poems were translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ezra Pound.

Marchese Antonio Cavalli (1820 fl.) Antonio and Clelia Cavalli were relatives of Terese Guiccioli.

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Susanna Centlivre (1669 c.-1723) English actress, playwright, and friend of Nicholas Rowe and Richard Steele; she wrote The Gamester (1705).

Jacques-François de Chastenet, marquis de Puységur (1656-1743) Marshal Luxembourg's quartermaster general; he wrote Art de la guerre par principes et par règles (1749).

Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) The “marvelous boy” of Bristol, whose forgeries of medieval poetry deceived many and whose early death by suicide came to epitomize the fate neglected genius.

William Chillingworth (1602-1644) English theologian and controversialist; he was the author of The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation (1638).

Colley Cibber (1671-1757) English actor, playwright, and much-ridiculed poet-laureate; he was the author of The Careless Husband (1704) and An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber (1740).

Marcus Tullius Cicero [Tully] (106 BC-43 BC) Roman statesman, rhetorician, and philosopher.

Edward Daniel Clarke (1769-1822) English traveler and collector, the younger brother of James Stanier Clarke; he was professor of mineralogy at Cambridge (1808) and university librarian (1817). He published Travels in various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa (1810-23) and corresponded with Byron.

Samuel Clarke (1675-1729) English theologian and Newtonian philosopher whose Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1714) provoked the charge of Arianism.

Anacharsis Cloots (1755-1794) Prussian-born philosophe who espoused cosmopolitanism and became a French citizen. He was executed during the French Revolution.

Thomas Cochrane, tenth earl of Dundonald (1775-1860) After an adventurous naval career in the Napoleonic wars he was caught up in financial scandal and dismissed; he secured the independence of Chile and Peru (1819-22) but was less successful as admiral of the Greek navy (1827-28); he was MP (1806, expelled 1814) and succeeded to the earldom in 1831.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English poet and philosopher who projected Lyrical Ballads (1798) with William Wordsworth; author of Biographia Literaria (1817), On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other works.

William Collins (1721-1759) English poet, author of Persian Eclogues (1742), Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical Subjects (1746), and Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands (1788).

George Colman the younger (1762-1836) English poet, playwright and censor of plays; manager of the Haymarket Theater (1789-1813); author of The Iron Chest (1796) taken from Godwin's novel Caleb Williams.

William Congreve (1670-1729) English comic dramatist; author of, among others, The Double Dealer (1694), Love for Love (1695), and The Way of the World (1700).

Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) French political theorist and novelist; author of Adolphe (1816).

Joseph Coolidge (1798-1879) An 1817 Harvard graduate who toured Europe before returning to America in 1824. He married Thomas Jefferson’s granddaughter, Ellen Wayles Randolph.

Sophie Ristaud Cottin (1770-1807) French novelist, author of Elisabeth ou les Exilés de Sibérie (1806).

Emily Mary Cowper, countess Cowper [née Lamb] (1787-1869) Whig hostess, the daughter of Sir Peniston Lamb, first Viscount Melbourne; she married (1) in 1805 Sir Peter Leopold Louis Francis Nassau Cowper, fifth Earl Cowper, and (2) in 1839, her long-time lover, Henry John Temple, third Viscount Palmerston.

William Cowper (1731-1800) English poet, author of Olney Hymns (1779), John Gilpin (1782), and The Task (1785); Cowper's delicate mental health attracted as much sympathy from romantic readers as his letters, edited by William Hayley, did admiration.

George Crabbe (1754-1832) English poet renowned for his couplet verse and gloomy depictions of country persons and places; author of the The Village (1783), The Parish Register (1807), The Borough (1810), and Tales of the Hall (1819).

Claude-Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon the younger (1707-1777) French libertine novelist, author of Le Sopha (1742) for which he spent time in the Bastille.

George Harpur Crewe, eighth baronet (1795-1844) Of Calke Abbey in Derbyshire; educated at Rugby School, he was a wealthy landowner and Conservative MP for Derbyshire South (1835-1841).

Henry Cromwell (1659-1728) The friend and correspondent of Alexander Pope, and of Elizabeth Thomas through whose hands Edmund Curll acquired the letters.

Alberico Curioni (1785-1875) Italian tenor who made his London debut performing Mozart in 1821.

John Philpot Curran (1750-1817) Irish statesman and orator; as a Whig MP (from 1783) he defended the United Irishmen in Parliament (1798).

Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) French biologist whose comparative study of fossils led him to believe in the immutability of species.

Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848) English essayist and literary biographer; author of Curiosities of Literature (1791). Father of the prime minister.

Robert Charles Dallas (1754-1824) English poet, novelist, and translator who corresponded with Byron. His sister Charlotte Henrietta Dallas (d. 1793) married Captain George Anson Byron (1758-1793); their son George Anson Byron (1789-1868) inherited Byron's title in 1824.

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Florentine poet, the author of the Divine Comedy and other works.

Lady Mary Darcy [née Doublet] (1721 c.-1801) Mary Doublet married Robert Darcy, fourth earl of Holderness in 1743; she was the grandmother of Augusta Leigh.

Sir Humphry Davy, baronet (1778-1829) English chemist and physicist, inventor of the safety lamp; in Bristol he knew Cottle, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey; he was president of the Royal Society (1820).

Lady Jane Davy [née Kerr] (1780-1855) Society hostess who in 1798 married Shuckburgh Ashby Apreece (d. 1807) and Humphry Davy in 1812.

Sir Francis Blake Delaval (1727-1771) Educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, he was a military officer, patron of the arts, and MP for Hindon (1751-54) and Andover (1754-68).

Giovanni Gherardo De Rossi (1754-1827) Italian playwright and man of letters; author of Scherzi poetici e pittorici (1795). But Byron may have written “Bossi” for Giuseppe Bossi who published a life of Leonardo in 1810-11.

Thomas John Dibdin (1771-1841) Actor and playwright said to have composed nearly two thousand songs; in 1815 he became manager at Drury-Lane while Byron was on the steering committee.

William Digby, fifth baron Digby (1662-1752) English non-juror; Alexander Pope visited him at his estate at Sherborne in Dorset.

Diodorus Siculus (30 BC fl.) Sicilian author who wrote a history of the world in Greek that survives in an incomplete state.

Charles Drummond (1790-1858) One of Byron's Harrow classmates and correspondents; after attending Christ Church, Oxford he became a partner in the family's banking business in London.

Henry Joseph Thomas Drury (1778-1841) The eldest son of Joseph Drury, Byron's headmaster; he was fellow of King's College, Cambridge and assistant-master at Harrow from 1801. In 1808 he married Ann Caroline Tayler, whose sisters married Drury's friends Robert Bland and Francis Hodgson.

John Dryden (1631-1700) English poet laureate, dramatist, and critic; author of Of Dramatick Poesie (1667), Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Alexander's Feast; or the Power of Musique (1697), The Works of Virgil translated into English Verse (1697), and Fables (1700).

Frances Anne Edgeworth [née Beaufort] (1769-1867) The daughter of Daniel Augustus Beaufort (1739-1821), the Irish cartographer; in 1798 she became the fourth wife of Richard Lovell Edgeworth.

Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) Irish novelist; author of Castle Rackrent (1800) Belinda (1801), The Absentee (1812) and Ormond (1817).

Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817) Irish magnate and writer on education; he published Practical Education, 2 vols (1788), and other works in collaboration with his daughter the novelist.

William Ekenhead (d. 1810) A native of Belfast and naval officer; he swam the Hellespont with Byron and died of a fall during the frigate Salsette’s return to Malta.

Robert William Elliston (1774-1831) English actor; he was manager of Drury Lane Theater (1819-26).

Epictetus (55-135) Roman Stoic philosopher whose teachings were summarized by Arrian in the Encheiridion.

Epicurus (341 BC-270 BC) Greek philosopher who defined the object of his science as the pursuit of happiness.

George Stanley Faber (1773-1854) Evangelical divine; author of A Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri, or, the great Gods of Phoenicia, Samothrace, Egypt, Troas, Greece, Italy, and Crete, 2 vols, (1803) and The Origin of Pagan Idolatry (1816).

Giovanni Battista Falcieri [Tita] (1798-1874) Byron's gondolier and afterwards his valet. He became a servant of Isaac D'Israeli (1832).

Marino Faliero (1285-1355) Doge of Venice 1354-55; he was executed after joining in a plot against the patricians of the city.

George Farquhar (1677-1707) Irish playwright, author of two repertory plays, The Recruiting Officer (1706) and The Beaux Stratagem (1707).

John Fawcett (1769-1837) English actor and composer of pantomimes and melodramas, among them Obi, or, Three-Fingered Jack (1800).

Henry Fielding (1707-1754) English dramatist, essayist, and novelist; author of Joseph Andrews (1742) and The History of Tom Jones (1749).

John Fitzgibbon, second earl of Clare (1792-1851) A Harrow friend of Byron's, son of the Lord Chamberlain of Ireland; he once fought a duel with Henry Grattan's son in response to an aspersion on his father. Lord Clare was Governor of Bombay between 1830 and 1834.

Richard Fitzpatrick (1748-1813) English military officer, politician, and poet allied with Fox and Sheridan in Parliament; he was secretary of state for war (1783, 1806) and author of Dorinda, a Town Eclogue (1775).

Margaret Mercer Flahault de la Billardrie, baroness Keith [née Elphinstone] (1788-1867) Daughter of Admiral George Keith Elphinstone, Viscount Keith; she married in 1817 Auguste Charles Joseph, Count de Flahault de la Billardrie (1785-1870), aide-de-camp to Napoleon Bonaparte.

John Fletcher (1579-1625) English playwright, author of The Faithful Shepherdess (1610) and of some fifteen plays in collaboration with Francis Beaumont.

William Fletcher (1831 fl.) Byron's valet, the son of a Newstead tenant; he continued in service to the end of the poet's life, after which he was pensioned by the family. He married Anne Rood, formerly maid to Augusta Leigh, and was living in London in 1831.

Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827) Italian poet and critic who settled in London in 1816 where he contributed essays on Italian literature to the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews.

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.

King Francis I of France (1494-1547) King of France 1515-47; he lost the battle of Pavia to the emperor Charles V.

Francis II, emperor of Austria (1768-1835) He succeeded Ludwig II as emperor of Hungary and Bohemia and took the title of emperor of Austria in 1804; with his minister Meternich he dominated the Holy Alliance.

John Hookham Frere (1769-1846) English diplomat and poet; educated at Eton and Cambridge, he was envoy to Lisbon (1800-02) and Madrid (1802-04, 1808-09); with Canning conducted the The Anti-Jacobin (1797-98); author of Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft (1817, 1818).

Count Gian-Francesco Galeani Napione (1748-1830) Piedmontese miscellaneous writer, the author of Dell'uso e dei pregi della lingua italiana libri III (1791).

Giovanni Antonio Galignani (1757-1821) Bookseller and from 1814 publisher of Galignani's Messenger, an English newspaper issued from Paris.

John Anthony Galignani (1796-1873) Bookseller with his brother William; in 1821 they succeeded their father as publishers of the Parisian newspaper Galignani's Messenger..

Vincenzo Gallina (1795-1842) Leader among the Italian Carbonari who followed Byron to Greece and assisted Mavrokordatos in drawing up a constitution.

Pietro Gamba (1801-1827) The brother of Teresa Guiccioli and member of Carbonieri. He followed Byron to Greece and left a memoir of his experiences.

Count Ruggiero Gamba Ghiselli (d. 1846) The father of Teresa Guiccioli and member of the political resistance to Austrian rule in the Romagna.

Charles John Gardiner, first earl of Blessington (1782-1829) The son of Luke Gardiner, first Viscount Mountjoy, educated at Eton. After a second marriage to Lady Blessington in 1818 he traveled on the Continent with his wife and Count D'Orsay, residing in Naples and Paris.

John Gay (1685-1732) English poet and Scriblerian satirist; author of The Shepherd's Week (1714), Trivia (1714), and The Beggar's Opera (1727).

King George III of Great Britain (1738-1820) King of Great Britain (1760-1820).

King George IV of Great Britain (1762-1830) Prince Regent (1811-20) and King of Great Britain (1820-1830).

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) Author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788).

William Gifford (1756-1826) Poet, scholar, and editor who began as a shoemaker's apprentice; after Oxford he published The Baviad (1794), The Maeviad (1795), and The Satires of Juvenal translated (1802) before becoming the founding editor of the Quarterly Review (1809-24).

Octavius Graham Gilchrist (1779-1823) English antiquary, editor, and friend of William Gifford; he engaged in controversy with William Lisle Bowles and brought John Clare to public attention.

Pierre-Louis Ginguené (1748-1815) French poet and critic, editor of the Correspondence of Mirabeau and Chamfort (1797).

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, playwright, and novelist; author of The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and Faust (1808, 1832).

Oliver Goldsmith (1728 c.-1774) Irish miscellaneous writer; his works include The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), The Deserted Village (1770), and She Stoops to Conquer (1773).

Charles David Gordon (1790-1826) The son of David Gordon, 14th of Abergeldie; he was educated at Harrow, which he entered in January 1803; in 1821 Byron described him as living at Dulwich.

George Gordon of Gight (1741-1779) Byron's maternal grandfather, son of Alexander Gordon and Margaret Duff. He died at Bath at the age of 37.

Henry Grattan (1746-1820) Irish statesman and patriot; as MP for Dublin he supported Catholic emancipation and opposed the Union.

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).

André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry (1741-1813) French composer and author of Mémoires, ou Essais sur la musique (1789).

Charles Grey, second earl Grey (1764-1845) Whig statesman and lover of the Duchess of Devonshire; the second son of the first earl (d. 1807), he was prime minister (1831-34).

Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872) German poet and playwright, author of Sappho (1819). In 1872 his works were collected in 43 volumes.

Frédéric Melchior, baron de Grimm (1723-1807) German-born man of letters; friend of Diderot and editor of Correspondance littéraire et philosophique.

Alessandro Guiccioli (1761-1840) The richest man in the Romagna and patron of the arts, who in 1818 married Teresa Guiccioli as his third wife.

Teresa Guiccioli (1800-1873) Byron's lover, who in 1818 married Alessandro Guiccioli. She composed a memoir of Byron, Lord Byron, Jugé par les Témoines de sa Vie (1868).

Hannibal (247 BC-182 BC) Leader of the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War with Rome.

John Hanson (1755-1841) Byron's solicitor and business agent.

William Harness (1790-1869) A Harrow friend and early correspondent of Byron. He later answered the poet in The Wrath of Cain (1822) and published an edition of Shakespeare (1825) and other literary projects. Harness was a longtime friend of Mary Russell Mitford.

Henry Harris (1783 c.-1839) The son of Thomas Harris, whom he succeeded as manager of Covent Garden Theater, 1809-22; he was an acquaintance of Thomas Moore.

Heloise (1101 c.-1164) The niece of Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame, and pupil and lover of Peter Abelard.

Henry III, king of England (1207-1272) The son of John, he was king of England from 1216 to 1272.

Henry III, king of France (1551-1589) Notorious for his vices, he was assassinated by the monk Jacques Clément.

Charles Hentsch (1822 fl.) Byron's banker in Geneva.

Herod I, king of Judea [Herod the Great] (73 BC c.-4 BC) King of Judea (43 BC) under the Romans.

Herodotus (484 BC c.-425 BC c.) Greek historian, author of Histories of the Persian Wars, called by Cicero “the founder of history.”

John Hervey, second baron Hervey [Lord Fanny] (1696-1743) Courtier, wit, and friend of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who was pilloried by Pope and returned the favor. He Memoirs were published in 1848.

Aaron Hill (1685-1750) English playwright and man of letters, a sometimes friend of Alexander Pope.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) English political philosopher and man of letters; author of Leviathan (1651) and other works.

John Cam Hobhouse, baron Broughton (1786-1869) Founder of the Cambridge Whig Club; traveled with Byron in the orient, radical MP for Westminster (1820); Byron's executor; after a long career in politics published Some Account of a Long Life (1865) later augmented as Recollections of a Long Life, 6 vols (1909-1911).

Francis Hodgson (1781-1852) Provost of Eton College, translator of Juvenal (1807) and close friend of Byron. He wrote for the Monthly and Critical Reviews, and was author of (among other volumes of poetry) Childe Harold's Monitor; or Lines occasioned by the last Canto of Childe Harold (1818).

James Hogg [The Ettrick Shepherd] (1770-1835) Scottish autodidact, poet, and novelist; author of The Queen's Wake (1813) and Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).

James Holmes (1777-1860) English miniature painter who studied at the Royal Academy and assisted Richard Westall; he was a family friend of Augusta Leigh.

Homer (850 BC fl.) Poet of the Iliad and Odyssey.

Esther Van Homrigh [Vanessa] (1688-1723) The lover of Jonathan Swift and subject of his “Cadenus and Vanessa” (1712).

John Hopkins (1520-1570) With Thomas Sternhold he translated the Psalms in the versions used in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Anglican prayer-books; their paired names became a byword for poor poetry.

Marie Isabelle Hoppner [née May] (d. 1870) The daughter of Beat Lois May, seigneur d'Oron et de Brandis of Bern, Switzerland; in 1814 she married Richard Belgrave Hoppner.

Richard Belgrave Hoppner (1786-1872) The son of John Hoppner, R.A. (1758-1810) and likewise a painter; he was English consul at Venice (1814-25). He married Marie Isabella May, of Bern, in 1814.

James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) English poet, journalist, and man of letters; editor of The Examiner and The Liberal; friend of Byron, Keats, and Shelley.

Washington Irving [Geoffrey Crayon] (1783-1859) American writer living in England in 1815, where he made his reputation with The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (1820).

Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773-1850) Scottish barrister, Whig MP, and co-founder and editor of the Edinburgh Review (1802-29). As a reviewer he was the implacable foe of the Lake School of poetry.

John, King of England (1167-1216) The son of Henry II; he was King of England 1199-1216.

Esther Johnson [Stella] (1681-1728) The lifelong friend of Jonathan Swift and object of his birthday verses; they were rumored to be secretly married.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English man of letters, among many other works he edited A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) and Shakespeare (1765), and wrote Lives of the Poets (1779-81).

Ben Jonson (1572-1637) English dramatist, critic, and epigrammatist, friend of William Shakespeare and John Donne.

Juvenal (110 AD fl.) Roman satirist noted, in contrast to Horace, for his angry manner.

Edmund Kean (1787-1833) English tragic actor famous for his Shakespearean roles.

John Keats (1795-1821) English poet, author of Endymion, "The Eve of St. Agnes," and other poems, who died of tuberculosis in Rome.

William Kent (1686-1748) English painter and landscape architect, the protégé of the Earl of Burlington and friend of Alexander Pope.

Douglas James William Kinnaird (1788-1830) Whig MP (1819-20) and banker; he introduced Byron to Isaac Nathan and managed Byron's finances.

Friedrich Gottlob Klopstock (1724-1803) German poet, the author of Der Messias (1748-83).

Thaddeus Kosciusko (1746-1817) Polish general and patriot who fought in the American Revolution and in 1794 led an unsuccessful rebellion against Russian and Prussian control of Poland.

John Kyrle [The Man of Ross] (1637-1724) Philanthropist and landscape designer celebrated by Alexander Pope in the third of his Moral Epistles.

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) French poet, politician, and historian; he published Nouvelles méditations poétiques (1820) and Histoire des Girondins (1847).

Lady Caroline Lamb [née Ponsonby] (1785-1828) Daughter of the third earl of Bessborough; she married the Hon. William Lamb (1779-1848) and fictionalized her infatuation with Lord Byron in her first novel, Glenarvon (1816).

Elizabeth Lamb, viscountess Melbourne [née Milbanke] (1751-1818) Whig hostess married to Peniston Lamb, first Viscount Melbourne (1744-1828); she was the confidant of Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire, the mother of William Lamb (1779-1848), and mother-in-law of Lady Caroline Lamb.

John Langhorne (1735-1779) English poet and translator, for many years the principal reviewer of poetry for the Monthly Review. He was the first to edit the poetry of William Collins (1765).

Louise de La Vallière (1644-1710) A mistress of Louis XIV of France from 1661 to 1667.

Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) English portrait painter who succeeded Joshua Reynolds as painter in ordinary to the king (1792); he was president of the Royal Academy (1820).

Sophia Priscilla Lee (1750-1824) English novelist, playwright, and poet, sister of the novelist Harriet Lee (1758-1851); her first play, The Chapter of Accidents, was produced at the Haymarket in 1780.

Hon. Augusta Mary Leigh [née Byron] (1783-1851) Byron's half-sister; the daughter of Amelia Darcy, Baroness Conyers, she married Lieutenant-Colonel George Leigh on 17 August 1807.

Francis Le Mann (d. 1851) Lady Byron's physician, who was called in to testify on Byron's sanity. He is possibly the Francis Lemann of Portman Sq., member of the College of Physicians (1827), who died 9 April 1851.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Italian painter and scientist.

Matthew Gregory Lewis [Monk Lewis] (1775-1818) English poet and novelist; author of The Monk: a Romance (1796), Castle Spectre (1797), and Tales of Wonder (1800).

Edward Noel Long (1788-1809) Byron's classmate at Harrow, afterwards ensign in the Coldstream Guards; he died at sea during the Peninsular Campaign.

Thomas Norton Longman (1771-1842) A leading London publisher whose authors included Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, and Moore.

Louis XIV, king of France [the Sun King] (1638-1715) The son of Louis XIII (d. 1643); he was King of France 1643-1715.

Charles François-Frédéric de Luxembourg (1702-1764) French soldier and husband of the former duchesse de Boufflers; he was Rousseau's protector after his quarrel with Madame d' Épinay.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Florentine statesman and political theorist, author of The Prince (1513).

Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832) Scottish philosopher and man of letters who defended the French Revolution in Vindiciae Gallicae (1791); he was Recorder of Bombay (1803-1812) and MP for Knaresborough (1819-32).

Joseph Manton (1766-1835) Renowned English gun-maker at his shop at 25 Davies Street, Berkeley Square, London. His shooting gallery was on the same premises as John Jackson's boxing club.

Tomasso Massaniello (1622-1647) A fisherman who led a rising of the Neapolitans in 1647.

Charles Robert Maturin (1780-1824) Anglo-Irish clergyman, novelist, and playwright patronized by Walter Scott; author of the tragedy Betram (1816) and the novel Melmoth the Wanderer (1820).

Louis de Maugiron (d. 1578) The one-eyed favorite of Henry III of France was killed in a recreation of the battle of the Horatii and the Curiatii.

Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) French philosopher who embraced Newtonianism in Discours sur les différentes figures des astres (1732). In 1745 he was hired by Frederick the Great to organize a Prussian academy.

Joseph Mawman (1760 c.-1827) Bookseller of York (1788) and London, where he purchased the business of Charles Dilly in 1800; he was an acquaintance of Samuel Parr.

Thomas Medwin (1788-1869) Lieutenant of dragoons who was with Byron and Shelley at Pisa; the author of Conversations of Lord Byron (1824) and The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols (1847).

Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) German philosopher and writer on aesthetics, friend of Lessing thought to be the inspiration for Nathan der Weise.

Ana Mendoza de la Cerda, princesa de Eboli (1540-1592) The princess, who appears as a character in Schiller's Don Carlos, lost an eye.

Angelo Mengaldo (1785-1869) Former soldier in Napoleon's army who was a Venetian friend of Byron and Alexander Scott.

Hon. Judith Milbanke [née Noel] (1751-1822) The eldest daughter of the first Viscount Wentworth and mother of Annabella, Lady Byron.

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) Educated at Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford, he was a poet, historian and dean of St Paul's (1849) who wrote for the Quarterly Review.

John Milton (1608-1674) English poet and controversialist; author of Comus (1634), Lycidas (1638), Areopagitica (1644), Paradise Lost (1667), and other works.

Giovanni Battista Missiaglia (1838 fl.) Bookseller and proprietor of the Apollo Library in Venice.

William Mitford (1744-1827) English historian, author of The History of Greece, 5 vols (1784-1818) and other works.

Moliere (1622-1673) French actor and playwright; author of Tartuffe (1664) and Le Misanthrope (1666).

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu [née Pierrepont] (1689-1762) English poet and epistolary writer, daughter of the first duke of Kingston; she quarreled with Alexander Pope and after living in Constantinople (1716-18) introduced inoculation to Britain.

Maria Montanari (1821 fl.) An elderly woman of Ravenna to whom Byron gave a pension.

Elizabeth Moore [née Dyke] [Bessy] (1793-1865) Irish actress who married Thomas Moore in a private ceremony 25 March 1811.

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.

Charles Mordaunt, third earl of Peterborough (1658 c.-1735) English admiral, general, and diplomat; late in life he was intimate with Pope and Swift.

Lady Sydney Morgan [née Owenson] (1778 c.-1859) Anglo-Irish novelist and socialite, author of The Wild Irish Girl (1806).

Raffaello Sanzio Morghen (1758-1833) Italian engraver who worked in Florence where he made portraits of Dante, Petrarch, Leonardo, Ariosto, and Tasso.

Pablo Morillo y Morillo, count of Cartagena (1775-1837) Spanish general who fought against Bolivar in Venezuela; he died in France.

Matilda Muggleton (1780 fl.) Not identified; described by Byron as “daughter of a choral vicar of Worcester Cathedral.”

Adolph Müllner (1774-1829) German novelist and playwright, author of Der neunundzwanzigste Februar (1812), and Die Schuld (1816).

Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672-1750) Italian historian and man of letters, the author of Rerum italicarum scriptores, 25 vols (1723-51) and Annali d'Italia, 12 vols (1745-49).

Joe Murray (d. 1820) Byron's elderly steward at Newstead Abbey who had served under the previous lord Byron.

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.

Mary Ann Musters [née Chaworth] (1785-1832) The grand-niece of the Chaworth who was killed by “Wicked Jack” Byron; she was the object of Byron's affections before and after she married John Musters in 1805.

Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821) Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St. Helena (1815).

Frederick North, fifth earl of Guilford (1766-1827) Son of the prime minister; he was governor of Ceylon (1798-1805) and an enthusiastic philhellene who founded the Ionian University at Corfu. He succeeded to the title in 1817.

Francis Osborne, fifth duke of Leeds (1751-1799) He was the son of the fourth duke and was foreign secretary under Pitt (1783-91). His first wife, Lady Amelia Darcy, eloped with Captain John Byron, the poet's father.

Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne (1789-1861) He was the son of Sir Francis Godolphin Osborne, fifth duke of Leeds by his second marriage, the first having ended in divorce after Amelia Darcy (mother of Augusta Leigh) eloped with Byron's father.

Ossian (250 fl.) Legendary blind bard of Gaelic story to whom James Macpherson attributed his poems Fingal and Temora.

Ovid (43 BC-17 AD c.) Roman poet famous for his erotic Art of Love and his mythological poem, The Metamorphoses.

Samuel Parr (1747-1825) English schoolmaster, scholar, and book collector whose strident politics and assertive personality involved him in a long series of quarrels.

Sir William Edward Parry (1790-1855) Admiral in the Royal Navy and arctic explorer; he was the author of Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a north-west Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific (1821).

Pausanias (175 fl.) Greek geographer, author of a Description of Greece in ten books.

Rt. Hon. William Yates Peel (1789-1858) The son of Sir Robert Peel, and brother of the PM; one of Byron's Harrow schoolmates, after attending St. John's College, Cambridge, he was MP, and Lord of the Treasury (1830, 1834).

Thomas Penrose (1742-1779) English lyric poet; his irregular ode “Madness” from Flights of Fancy (1775) was widely reprinted into the nineteenth century.

James Perry (1756-1821) Whig journalist; founder and editor of the European Magazine (1782), editor of the Morning Chronicle (1790-1821).

Pietro Vannucci Perugino (1446 c.-1523) Florentine painter praised and dispraised for the sweetness of his style.

Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) Lyric poet and founder of humanism in Italy.

Philip II, king of France (1165-1223) The son of Louis VII; he was king of France from 1180 to 1223.

Gilbert Pidcock (1743 c.-1810) Showman and menagerie-keeper at the Exeter ’Change in London—his lions were grand attractions.

Bridget Elizabeth Pigot (1783-1866) Byron's early friend who lived with her mother and brothers at Southwell Green where Byron visited his mother at Burgage Manor.

Pindar (522 BC c.-443 BC) Greek lyric poet who celebrated athletic victories in elaborate odes that became models for intricate and often elliptical odes in English.

Alessio dal Pinto (d. 1820 Fl.) Brother of Luigi dal Pinto, the commandant of Ravenna assassinated outside the Palazzo Guiccioli.

Luigi dal Pinto (d. 1820) The military commandant of Ravenna who was assassinated outside the Palazzo Guiccioli on December 9th.

Plutarch (46 c.-120 c.) Greek biographer and moral philosopher; author of Parallel Lives and Moralia.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English poet and satirist; author of The Rape of the Lock (1714) and The Dunciad (1728).

John Grey Porter (1789-1873) Son of Rt. Rev. John Porter, Bishop of Clogher; he was a classmate of Byron's at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, and a correspondent. He held a prebendary at Clogher until 1871.

Priscian (500 fl.) Latin grammarian, author of Institutiones grammaticae in eighteen books.

Bryan Waller Procter [Barry Cornwall] (1787-1874) English poet; a contemporary of Byron at Harrow, and friend of Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb. He was the author of several volumes of poem and Mirandola, a tragedy (1821).

Luigi Pulci (1432-1484) Italian poet patronized by the Medici family; author of the Il Morgante (1483).

Raphael (1483-1520) Of Urbino; Italian painter patronized by Leo X.

Countess Rasponi (1820 fl.) Not identified; the Rasponis were friends of the Gamba family in Ravenna.

Jean-François Regnard (1655-1709) French comic dramatist, author of Le Joueur (1696) and Les Folies amoureuses (1704).

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) English portrait-painter and writer on art; he was the first president of the Royal Academy (1768).

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) English printer and novelist; author of Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1739) and Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady (1747-48).

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French courtier and moralist; author of Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales (1665).

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).

Sarah Rogers (1772-1855) Of Regent's Park. the younger sister of the poet Samuel Rogers; she lived with her brother Henry in Highbury Terrace.

William Roscoe (1753-1831) Historian, poet, and man of letters; author of Life of Lorenzo di Medici (1795) and Life and Pontificate of Leo X (1805). He was Whig MP for Liverpool (1806-1807) and edited the Works of Pope, 10 vols (1824).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) Swiss-born man of letters; author of, among others, Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloïse (1761), Émile (1762) and Les Confessions (1782).

Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718) English poet, playwright, editor of Shakespeare, and poet laureate (1715); author of The Fair Penitent (1703) and Jane Shore (1714).

Cardinal Antonio Lamberto Rusconi (1743-1825) Bishop of Imola and cardinal legate of the Romagna 1819-24.

John Russell, first earl Russell (1792-1878) English statesman, son of John Russell sixth duke of Bedford (1766-1839); he was author of Essay on the English Constitution (1821) and Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe (1824) and was Prime Minister (1865-66).

Guillaume-Emmanuel-Joseph Guilhem de Clermont-Lodève, baron de Sainte-Croix (1746-1809) French historian; his biography of Alexander the Great was translated into English in 1793.

Henry St. John, first viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751) English politician and writer, friend of Alexander Pope; author of The Idea of a Patriot King (written 1738), and Letters on the Study and Use of History (1752).

Jean-François marquis de Saint-Lambert (1716-1803) French aristocrat and member of the Académie Française; he wrote Les Saisons (1769) modeled on James Thomson's poem.

Sallust (86 BC-35 BC) Roman historian; author of The War against Jugurtha and The Conspiracy of Cataline.

Sappho (612 BC c.-570 BC c.) Greek lyric poet, born on the Isle of Lesbos.

Sardanapalus (650 BC fl.) Assyrian monarch who burned his palace and himself during a siege of Nineveh by the Medes.

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) German poet and playwright; author of The Robbers (1781), Don Carlos (1787), Maria Stuart (1800), and Wilhelm Tell (1804).

August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767-1845) German scholar, critic, and translator of Shakespeare.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829) The younger brother of August von Schlegel, editor of the Athenaeum. His Lectures on the History of Literature (1814) was translated by John Gibson Lockhart.

Alexander Scott (1819 fl.) Friend of Byron and Richard Belgrave Hoppner; he was a native of Scotland resident in Venice.

John Scott, first earl of Eldon (1751-1838) Lord chancellor (1801-27); he was legal counsel to the Prince of Wales and an active opponent of the Reform Bill.

John Scott (1784-1821) After Marischal College he worked as a journalist with Leigh Hunt, edited The Champion (1814-1817), and edited the London Magazine (1820) until he was killed in the duel at Chalk Farm.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Scottish poet, novelist, antiquary, biographer, editor, and sheriff.

Marianna Segati (1816 fl.) Byron's first mistress in Venice, the wife of his landlord, a draper near the Piazza San Marco.

Jean Regnauld de Segrais (1624-1701) French man of letters who was elected to the Académie Français in 1662.

Seneca (4 BC c.-65) Roman statesman, philosopher, and tragic playwright, advisor to Nero and author of Medea, Troades, and Phaedra.

Elkanah Settle (1648-1724) English playwright, author of the Empress of Morocco (1673); his strident whiggery made him a target of attacks by Dryden and Pope.

Anna Seward [the Swan of Lichfield] (1742-1809) English poet, patron, and letter-writer; she was the center of a literary circle at Lichfield. Her Poetical Works, 3 vols (1810) were edited by Walter Scott.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) The Bard of Avon.

Richard Sharp [Conversation Sharp] (1759-1835) English merchant, Whig MP, and member of the Holland House set; he published Letters and Essays in Poetry and Prose (1834).

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley [née Godwin] (1797-1851) English novelist, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecaft, and the second wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley. She is the author of Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1835) and the editor of Shelley's works (1839-40).

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) English poet, with Byron in Switzerland in 1816; author of Queen Mab (1813), The Revolt of Islam (1817), The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound (1820), and Adonais (1821).

John Sheppard (1785-1879) Baptist preacher employed in the wool trade in Somerset; author of Thoughts Preparative or Persuasive to Private Devotion (1824). Byron was much moved by the first Mrs. Sheppard's piety.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) Anglo-Irish playwright, author of The School for Scandal (1777), Whig MP and ally of Charles James Fox (1780-1812).

Sarah Siddons [née Kemble] (1755-1831) English tragic actress, sister of John Philip Kemble, famous roles as Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, and Ophelia. She retired from the stage in 1812.

Algernon Sidney (1623-1683) English republican writer executed in connection with the Rye-House plot; he was respected as a martyr by the Whig party; author of Discourses concerning Government (1698).

Samuel Weller Singer (1783-1858) English antiquary and bookseller; he wrote biographies of English poets for the Chiswick British Poets, edited Spence's Anecdotes (1820) in a rival edition to Murray's, and contributed to the Literary Gazette.

Christopher Smart (1722-1771) English poet, translator, and man of letters; author of A Song to David (1763) written while the poet was confined for madness.

Constance Spencer Smith [née Herbert] (1785-1829) Daughter of Baron Herbert, Austrian ambassador to Constantinople, and wife of the diplomat John Spencer Smith, with whom Byron had an affair in Malta. She died in Vienna.

James Smith (1775-1839) Solicitor and author; with his brother Horace he wrote Rejected Addresses (1812) and Horace in London (1813).

Socrates (469 BC-399 BC) Athenian philosopher whose teachings were recorded by Plato and Xenophon.

King Solomon (d. 922 BC c.) Son of David, king of the Hebrews c. 972-932 BC.

Guido Sorelli (1841 fl.) Italian translator and playwright; his later publications seem to have been composed in English, including an autobiography.

Seranzo (1821 fl.) Not identified, a Venetian acquaintance of Byron and Richard Belgrave Hoppner.

Robert Southey (1774-1843) Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose works, among them the Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813), History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).

Joseph Spence [Sir Harry Beaumont] (1699-1768) English essayist, friend of Pope, Oxford Professor of Poetry, and patron of Stephen Duck and Thomas Blacklock; author of Polymetis: or, An Enquiry concerning the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets, and the Remains of the Antient Artists (1747).

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.

Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) English playwright and essayist, who conducted The Tatler, and (with Joseph Addison) The Spectator and The Guardian.

Thomas Sternhold (d. 1549) English courtier; with John Hopkins (d. 1570) produced a metrically irregular and much-abused translation of the Psalms.

John Joseph Stockdale (1777-1847) London bookseller who operated a shop in Pall Mall between 1807 and 1822; in 1825 he achieved notoriety by publishing the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson.

Louisa Stuart, countess of Albany [née Emmanuel] (1752-1824) Wife of Charles Edward, the young Pretender, whom she married in 1772 and abandoned for the Piedmontese poet Count Vittorio Alfieri.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Dean of St Patrick's, Scriblerian satirist, and author of Battle of the Books with Tale of a Tub (1704), Drapier Letters (1724), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729).

John Taaffe (1787-1862) The son of John Taaffe of Smarmore Castle, Co. Louth in Ireland; he was the translator of Dante and companion of Shelley and Byron in Italy, where he died in 1862.

Torquato Tasso (1554-1595) Italian poet, author of Aminta (1573), a pastoral drama, and Jerusalem Delivered (1580).

John Cecil Tattersall (d. 1812) Byron's classmate at Harrow; after completing his education at Christ Church, Oxford he entered the church.

Thomas Taylor [the Platonist] (1758-1835) Bank-clerk and dissenter whose lectures on Platonic philosophy at the house of the sculptor John Flaxman gained him the title of “the Platonist.” He spent his later years as a professional translator.

William Tell (1250 fl.) Legendary Swiss archer whose story was popularized by Schiller's drama (1804).

Richard Temple, first viscount Cobham (1675-1749) English politician and leader of the opposition to Sir Robert Walpole; Alexander Pope visited him at his estate at Stowe.

Sir William Temple, baronet (1628-1699) English statesman, diplomat, and patron of Jonathan Swift; his much-admired essays were published as Miscellanea, 3 vols (1680, 1692, 1701).

Themistocles (524 BC c.-459 BC c.) Athenian statesman who commanded the Greek fleet against the Persians at Salamis.

James Thomson (1700-1748) Anglo-Scottish poet and playwright; while his descriptive poem, The Seasons (1726-30), was perhaps the most popular poem of the eighteenth century, the poets tended to admire more his Spenserian burlesque, The Castle of Indolence (1748).

Bertel Thorwaldsen (1770-1844) Danish sculptor who with Canova led the neoclassical school at Rome.

Thucydides (460 BC c.-395 BC c.) Athenian historian; author of the History of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta (431-404 BC).

Tiberius (42 BC-37) Roman emperor 14-37 AD, the heir of Augustus.

Girolamo Tiraboschi (1731-1794) Italian literary historian, the author of Storia della letturatura italiana, 10 vols (1787-94).

Titian (1487 c.-1576) Venetian painter celebrated for his portraits.

William Turner (1792-1867) English diplomat who journeyed to Constantinople with Robert Liston's embassy in 1811; he was author of Journal of a Tour in the Levant (1820).

Abraham John Valpy (1787-1854) Son of the Reading schoolmaster Richard Valpy, he was a London printer who specialized in classical texts. With the poet George Dyer he published 141 volumes of Delphin classics (1819-30).

Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) English playwright, author of The Provoked Wife (1697); as an architect designed Castle Howard and Blenheim.

Luigi Vestri (1781-1841) Italian actor who performed in plays by Alfieri and Goldoni.

Countess Geltrude Vicari (1821 fl.) A friend of Teresa Guiccioli at Ravenna.

Virgil (70 BC-19 BC) Roman epic poet; author of Eclogues, Georgics, and the Aenead.

Voltaire (1694-1778) French historian and man of letters; author of, among many other works, The Age of Louis XIV (1751) and Candide (1759).

James Waldegrave, second earl Waldegrave (1715-1763) Confidant of George II and governor of the young Prince of Wales; author of Memoirs published by Murray in 1821.

Horace Walpole, fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797) English biographer, letter-writer, and antiquary; son of Sir Robert Walpole; author of The Castle of Otranto (1764).

Robert Walpole, first earl of Orford (1676-1745) English politician whose management of the financial crisis resulting from the South Sea Bubble led to his commanding career the leader of the Whigs in Parliament (1721-42).

William Warburton (1698-1779) English Divine and man of letters; he was bishop of Gloucester (1759); he was the friend, annotator, and executor of Alexander Pope.

Joseph Warton (1722-1800) English poet and literary critic; headmaster of Winchester School (1766-1800); author of An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope (1756, 1782).

Jane Waterhouse (1821 fl.) The wife of John Waterhouse, merchant, convicted of crim. con. with a Col. Berkeley while her merchant husband was on business in Jamaica. The guilty parties had been reading Moore's Lalla Rookh before the unfortunate pregnancy occurred.

Mr. Wheatley (1821 fl.) The half-brother of John Tattersall, who lived near Canterbury and who Byron thought might be in possession of some of his early letters.

Henry Whitby (1781-1812) He was acquitted of murdering an American seaman while Captain of the Leander; for his service as captain of the Cerberus he was awarded a medal for gallantry in 1812.

Henry Kirke White (1785-1806) Originally a stocking-weaver; trained for the law at Cambridge where he was a contemporary of Byron; after his early death his poetical Remains were edited by Robert Southey (2 vols, 1807) with a biography that made the poet famous.

Christoph Martin Wieland (1733-1813) German romantic poet; author of Musarion (1768), Die Abderiten (1774) and Oberon (1780), which was translated into English by William Sotheby (1798).

John Wilkes (1725-1797) English political reformer and foe of George III who was twice elected to Parliament while imprisoned; he was the author of attacks on the Scots and the libertine Essay on Woman.

John Wilson [Christopher North] (1785-1854) Scottish poet and Tory essayist, the chief writer for the “Noctes Ambrosianae” in Blackwood's Magazine and professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh University (1820).

John Wingfield (1791-1811) Byron's schoolmate at Harrow was the son of Richard Wingfield, fourth Viscount Powerscourt. He entered the Coldstream Guards and died of fever at Coimbra.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) With Coleridge, author of Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.

Francis Wrangham (1769-1842) Classical scholar, translator, and book collector; author of A Few Sonnets Attempted from Petrarch in Early Life (1817), dedicated to Byron.

William Wycherley (1641-1716) Restoration dramatist; author of The Country Wife (1675) and The Plain Dealer (1676).

Xenophon (430 BC c.-354 BC c.) Athenian writer; author of Memorabilia (on Socrates) and the Cyropedia (on the Persian King Cyrus).

Xerxes I, king of Persia (d. 465 BC) King of Persia (485-465 BC); the son of Darius whose fleet was destroyed by the Greeks at the battle of Salamis in 480 BC.

Edward Young (1683-1765) English poet, author of The Complaint; or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality (1742-44), a poem that fostered a taste for gothic literature.

Lega Zambelli (1827 fl.) Count Guiccioli's steward, afterwards steward to Lord Byron; he married Teresa Guiccioli's confidant Fanny Sylvestrini.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. (1817-1980). Begun as the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, Blackwood's assumed the name of its proprietor, William Blackwood after the sixth number. Blackwood was the nominal editor until 1834.

The Courier. (1792-1842). A London evening newspaper; the original proprietor was James Perry; Daniel Stuart, Peter Street, and William Mudford were editors; among the contributors were Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Galt.

The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal. (1802-1929). Founded by Francis Jeffery, Sydney Smith, and Henry Brougham, the Edinburgh Review was for decades a principal organ of Whig opinion in Britain.

The Etonian. 2 vols (1820-1821). A monthly literary journal produced by a remarkable group of Eton scholars, edited by Winthrop Mackworth Praed; Walter Blunt.

The Examiner. (1808-1881). Founded by John and Leigh Hunt, this weekly paper divided its attention between literary matters and radical politics; William Hazlitt was among its regular contributors.

Galignani's Messenger. (1814-95). Founded by Giovanni Antonio Galignani; it was a daily paper from 1821. Cyrus Redding was the editor 1815-18; afterwards it was edited by James S. Bowes.

Gazzetta Ticinese. (1799-). A daily paper, possibly that Byron refers to as the “Lugano Gazette.”

The Guardian. (1713). A daily paper edited by Richard Steele and Joseph Addison with contributions by the leading writers of the day.

Java Govt. Gazette. 5 vols (1812-1816). Printed by A. H. Hubbard at the Govt. Press.

John Bull. (1820-1892). A scurrilous Tory weekly newspaper edited by Theodore Hook.

The Liberal: Verse and Prose from the South. (1822-1823). A quarterly edited by Leigh Hunt with contributions by Lord Byron; two volumes were published.

The Monthly Review. (1749-1844). The original editor was Ralph Griffiths; he was succeeded by his son George Edward who edited the journal from 1803 to 1825, who was succeeded by Michael Joseph Quin (1825–32).

Morning Chronicle. (1769-1862). James Perry was proprietor of this London daily newspaper from 1789-1821; among its many notable poetical contributors were Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, Rogers, and Campbell.

The Quarterly Review. (1809-1967). Published by John Murray, the Quarterly was instigated by Walter Scott as a Tory rival to the Edinburgh Review. It was edited by William Gifford to 1824, and by John Gibson Lockhart from 1826 to 1853.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) The Drummer; or, the Haunted House. A Comedy. (London: Jacob Tonson, 1715). The first edition was anonymous.

Aeschylus (525 BC c.-456 BC c.) Prometheus Bound. (450 BC c.). The inspiration for Byron's ‘Prometheus’ (1816) and Shelley's Prometheus Unbound (1820).

Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803) Filippo. (1783). The subject of the tragedy is Philip II of Spaina and his son Don Carlos.

Francis Beaumont (1585-1616) Two Noble Kinsmen. (Paris: 1634). A tragi-comedy based on Chaucer's Knight's Tale written with John Fletcher.

Edward Berwick (1753 c.-1819 fl.) The Life of Apollonius of Tyana: Translated from the Greek of Philostratus. (London: Payne, 1809). Apollonius of Tyana in Cappadocia was a first-century Pythagorean mystic.

Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland (1778-1846) Documents historiques et réflections sur le gouvernement de Hollande. (Paris: 1820). By the former king of Holland.

James Boswell (1740-1795) The Life of Samuel Johnson. 2 vols (London: 1791). One of the most widely-read books of the romantic era, and a model for Moore's Letters and Journals of Lord Byron (1830) and Lockhart's Life of Scott (1837-38).

William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850) The Missionary: a Poem. (London: J. Murray, 1813). Later titled "The Missionary of the Andes" (1822) and "The Ancient Missionary of Chile" (1835).

William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850) Two Letters to the Right Honourable Lord Byron, in answer to His Lordships's Letter to **** ******, on the Rev. Wm. L. Bowles's Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope. (London: J. Murray, 1821). In reply to Byron's Letter to John Murray (1821).

Thomas Bridges (1775 fl.) Homer travestie: being a new Translation of the four first Books of the Iliad. (London: R. Marriner, 1762). Several times reprinted with additions; fourth edition 1797.

Frances D'Arblay [née Burney] (1752-1840) Evelina, or, a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World. 3 vols (London: T. Lowndes, 1778). A society novel; the first publication was anonymous.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “The Blues: a Literary Eclogue” in The Liberal. Vol. 2 No. 3 (1823): 1-21. Originally composed in 1821, Byron's satire was published in Leigh Hunt's periodical after it had been rejected by John Murray.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “Cain: a Mystery” in Sardanapalus: a Tragedy. The two Foscari: a Tragedy. Cain: a Mystery. (London: Murray, 1821). A closet drama in three acts that gave considerable offence to the pious.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “The Charity Ball” in Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron. (John Murray, 1830). Moore prints only an extract from a poem dated 10 December 1820.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: a Romaunt. (London: John Murray, 1812-1818). A burlesque topographical poem in Spenserian stanzas; Cantos I-II were published in 1812, III in 1816, and IV in 1818.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Canto the Fourth. (London: John Murray, 1818). Harold's travels in Italy.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) The Corsair: a Tale. (London: Murray, 1814). The story of Conrad, Medora, and Gulnare, related in heroic couplets.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) Don Juan. (London: 1819-1824). A burlesque poem in ottava rima published in installments: Cantos I and II published in 1819, III, IV and V in 1821, VI, VII, and VIII in 1823, IX, X, and XI in 1823, XII, XIII, and XIV in 1823, and XV and XVI in 1824.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “Elegy on Newstead Abbey” in Hours of Idleness, a Series of Poems, original and translated. (Newark: S. and J. Ridge, 1807). In quatrains; part of the busy series of poems derived from Gray's Elegy written in a Country Churchyard.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “Elegy on the Recovery of Lady Noel” in Conversations of Lord Byron. (London: Colburn, 1824). Sent by Byron to correspondents in 1821.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. (London: Cawthorn, 1809). Byron's revisions ended with the third edition in 1810; he later attempted to suppress his pointed satire on the literary establishment.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “Epigram” in Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron. (John Murray, 1830). The epigram was sent to Thomas Moore in a letter of 22 June 1821.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “From the French” in Morning Chronicle. (15 March 1816). Collected in Byron's Poems (1816).

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “From the French” in The Liberal. Vol. 1 No. 2 (1823): 396. An epigram translated in a letter to Thomas Moore of 2 August 1821.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) The Giaour, a Fragment of a Turkish Tale. (London: John Murray, 1813). The first of Byron's oriental tales.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “Heaven and Earth, a Mystery” in The Liberal. Vol. 1 No. 2 (January 1823): 165-206. Composed in 1821.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “Hints from Horace” in The Miscellaneous Works. 2 vols (London: J. Murray, [1831]). Byron's suppressed paraphrase of Horace's Ars Poetica was written in 1811 and posthumously published in 1831.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) The Irish Avatar. (Paris: 1821). Twenty copies were printed for private distribution.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “John Keats” in Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron. (John Murray, 1830). Sent in a letter to John Murray, 30 July 1821.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) Letter to **** ****** on the Rev. W. L. Bowles' Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope. (London: J. Murray, 1821). The Strictures appeared in Bowles's 1806 edition of Pope.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) Manfred, a Dramatic Poem. (London: J. Murray, 1817). The moody hero mourns the loss of his lover Astarte amid spectacular Alpine scenery.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “Marino Faliero” in Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice: An Historical Tragedy, in Five Acts. With Notes. The Prophecy of Dante, a Poem. (London: Murray, 1821). A tale of revenge involving the forty-ninth doge of Venice, who had been elected in 1354.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) Memoir. (1824: destroyed). The autobiographical memoranda begun in 1818 and given to Thomas Moore in 1819; after Byron's death it was suppressed with the encouragement of John Cam Hobhouse and John Murray.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “Morgante Maggiore” in The Liberal. Vol. 2 No. 4 (1823): 193-249. The first canto of Pulci's poem, translated in 1820.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) Observations upon ‘Observations.’ A Second Letter to John Murray, Esq. on the Rev. W. L. Bowles's Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope.. (London: J. Murray, 1835). Posthumously published; the Strictures had appeared in Bowles's 1806 edition of Pope.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “New Duet” in The Liberal. Vol. 1 No. 2 (January 1823): 398. On William Lisle Bowles and the Pope controversy, first printed by Leigh Hunt.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “The Prophecy of Dante, a Poem” in Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice: An Historical Tragedy, in Five Acts. With Notes. The Prophecy of Dante, a Poem. (London: Murray, 1821). A visionary treatment of Italian politics.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “Sardanapalus a Tragedy” in Sardanapalus a Tragedy. The two Foscari, a Tragedy. Cain, a Mystery. (London: Murray, 1821). Byron dedicated his tragedy concerning the King of Nineveh to Goethe.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “Stanzas written on the Road between Florence and Pisa” in Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron. (John Murray, 1830). Four stanzas dated 6 November 1821.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “To Mr. Murray” in Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron. (John Murray, 1830). Six stanzas sent in a letter of 11 April 1818.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “To Mr. Murray” in Moore, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron. (John Murray, 1830). Four stanzas sent in a letter of 23 August 1821.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “The Two Foscari, a Tragedy” in Sardanapalus a Tragedy. The two Foscari, a Tragedy. Cain, a Mystery. (London: Murray, 1821).

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) “The Vision of Judgment. By Quevedo Redivivus” in The Liberal. Vol. 1 No. 1 (1822): 3-39. Byron's burlesque of Southey's Vision of Judgement was reprinted as a pamphlet by John Hunt in 1822.

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) Werner: a Tragedy. (London: John Murray, 1823). Issued in October 1822.

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) Gertrude of Wyoming; a Pennsylvanian Tale. And other Poems. (London: Longman, 1809). If Campbell's long-awaited successor to the Pleasures of Hope initially proved something of a disappointment it had a lasting influence on descriptive poems in Spenserian stanzas.

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) Specimens of the British Poets: with Biographical and Critical Notices, and an Essay on English Poetry. 7 vols (London: Murray, 1819). Campbell's prefatory remarks sparked the “Pope Controversy” between advocates of the classical and romantic schools in English poetry.

William Collins (1721-1759) Persian Eclogues. (London: J. Roberts, 1742). The first edition was presented as a translation from the Persian; reprinted as Oriental Eclogues (1757).

George Colman the younger (1762-1836) Love Laughs at Locksmiths: a Farce in Two Acts. (London: J. Cawthorn, 1803).

John Wilson Croker (1780-1857) “Keats's Endymion” in Quarterly Review. Vol. 19 No. 37 (April 1818): 204-08. The review that Shelley believed killed John Keats.

William Henry Curran (1789 c.-1858) The Life of the Right Honourable John Philpot Curran, late Master of the Rolls in Ireland. 2 vols (Edinburgh: A. Constable and Co., 1819). By the son of the Irish statesman.

Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848) Curiosities of Literature: consisting of Anecdotes, Characters, Sketches and Dissertations Literary, Critical, and Historical. (London: J. Murray, 1791). Continued in 3 vols 1793-1817; 5 vols 1823; Series 2, 3 vols 1834; 6 vols 1834.

Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817), Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth begun by himself and concluded by his Daughter, Maria Edgeworth. 2 vols (London: R. Hunter, and Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1820).

George Stanley Faber (1773-1854) A Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri; or, the great Gods of Phenicia, Samothrace, Egypt, Troas, Greece, Italy, and Crete; being an Attempt to deduce the several Orgies of Isis, Ceres, Mithras, Bacchus, Rhea, Adonis, and Hecate, from a Union of the Rites commemorative of the Deluge with the Adoration of the Hosts of Heaven. 2 vols (Oxford: For the author, 1803).

Henry Fielding (1707-1754) The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams. Written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote. 2 vols (London: A. Millar, 1742).

Pierre-Louis Ginguené (1748-1815) Histoire littéraire d'Italie. 14 vols (Paris: 1811-35). The first nine volumes are by Ginguené.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728 c.-1774) The Vicar of Wakefield: a Tale. (London: F. Newbery, 1766). Parson Primrose is the hero of this partly-autobiographical sentimental romance.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771) An Elegy wrote in a Country Churchyard. (London: R. Dodsley, 1751). The most popular and most frequently imitated poem of the eighteenth century.

Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872) Sappho. (1819). A tragedy read by Byron in Ravenna in an Italian translation by Guido Sorelli.

Frédéric Melchior, baron de Grimm (1723-1807) Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique, adresse un souverain d'Allemagne. 6 vols (Paris: 1812-14). Consisting largely of Grimm's correspondence with Diderot; reviewed by John Herman Merivale in the Quarterly Review for March 1813.

Anthony Hamilton (1646 c.-1719) Memoirs of the Life of Count de Grammont: containing, in particular, the amorous Intrigues of the Court of England in the Reign of King Charles II. (London: J. Round, 1713). Translated from the original French; a key was required to identify the various personages mentioned.

Francis Hodgson (1781-1852) Childe Harold's Monitor; or, Lines occasioned by the last Canto of Childe Harold, including Hints to other Contemporaries. (London: J. Porter, 1816). An argument for neoclassical standards in English poetry.

Francis Hodgson (1781-1852) Saeculomastix; or, the Lash of the Age we live in. A Poem in Two Parts. (London: Porter, 1819). Anonymously published.

Henry Richard Fox, third baron Holland (1773-1840) Some Account of the Lives and Writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio and Guillen de Castro. 2 vols (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1817). The Life and Writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio had been previously published in 1806.

Homer (850 BC fl.) The Iliad. (800 BC c.). The tale of Troy, generally read in the translation by Alexander Pope.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) London: a Poem, in imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal. (London: R. Dodsley, 1738). A satire on urban life in modern times.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) The Vanity of Human Wishes. The Tenth Satire of Juvenal. (London: R. Dodsley, 1749). A satire on the follies of mankind imitated from Juvenal.

John Keats (1795-1821) Endymion: a Poetic Romance. (London: Taylor and Hessey, 1818). A pastoral romance whose obscure allegory and overwrought imagery found little sympathy among the critics.

John Keats (1795-1821) “Hyperion, a Fragment” in Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and other Poems. (London: Taylor and Hessey, 1820). A Miltonic fragment on themes from Greek mythology.

Harriet Lee (1758-1851) The Canterbury Tales. 5 vols (London: G. and J. Robinson, 1797–1805). With contributions by Harriet Lee's elder sister Sophia.

Harriet Lee (1758-1851) “Kruitzner, or the German's Tale” in The Canterbury Tales. 5 vols (London: G. and J. Robinson, 1797–1805). The gothic novella “Kruitzner” was later printed separately.

John Lemprière (1765 c.-1824) Bibliotheca classica; or, a Classical Dictionary, containing a full Account of all the Proper Names mentioned in antient Authors. (Reading: A. M. Smart and T. Cowslade, 1788). There were many editions of this useful scholar's crib.

Alain-René Lesage (1668-1747) The History and Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane. 3 vols (London: 1725). The French original was published in three parts between 1715 and 1735.

William Mitford (1744-1827) The History of Greece. 5 vols (London: J. Murray, 1784-1818). Mitford was compelled to divide the palm with a rival History of Greece (1787) by John Gillies (1747-1836).

Thomas Moore (1779-1852) Lalla Rookh, an Oriental Romance. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1817). A collection of four oriental tales in verse: “The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan,” “Paradise and the Peri,” “The Fire-Worshippers,” and “The Light of the Harem.”

Lady Sydney Morgan [née Owenson] (1778 c.-1859) France. 2 vols (London: H. Colburn, 1817).

Lady Sydney Morgan [née Owenson] (1778 c.-1859) Italy. 2 vols (London: H. Colburn, 1821). With notes by Thomas Charles Morgan.

Adolph Müllner (1774-1829) Guilt, or, the Gipsey's Prophecy: a Tragedy. (London: Boosey, 1819). Translated from the German by Robert Pearse Gillies.

Pausanias (175 fl.) Periegesis Hellados. (160 c.). Translated by Thomas Taylor as The Description of Greece (1794).

John William Polidori (1795-1821) The Vampyre: a Tale. (London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1819). The preface attributes the work to Byron, who had supplied the subject.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) “Eloisa to Abelard” in The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope. (London: Jacob Tonson and Bernard Lintot, 1717). A heroic epistle that Joseph Warton uncharacteristically admired.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) An Essay on Man. (London: J. Wilford, 1733). In four epistles; the first publication was anonymous.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) Of the Characters of Women: an Epistle to a Lady. (London: Lawton Gilliver, 1735).

Bryan Waller Procter [Barry Cornwall] (1787-1874) Dramatic Scenes. With other Poems, now first printed, By Barry Cornwall. (London: C. and J. Ollier, 1819). Procter's closet dramas were widely admired.

Bryan Waller Procter [Barry Cornwall] (1787-1874) Marcian Colonna: an Italian Tale with three Dramatic Scenes and other Poems. (London: John Warren; C. and J. Ollier, 1820). A verse narrative in the manner of Leigh Hunt.

Bryan Waller Procter [Barry Cornwall] (1787-1874) A Sicilian Story, with Diego de Montilla, and other Poems. (London: C. and J. Ollier, 1820). An Italian tale in the manner of Leigh Hunt.

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) Pamela: or, Virtue rewarded. In a Series of Familiar Letters from a beautiful young Damsel, to her Parents. 2 vols (London: C. Rivington; and J. Osborn, 1741). Richardson's first novel, anonymously published.

Samuel Rogers (1763-1855) Italy, a Poem. 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1823-1828). In 1828 the poem was revised and expanded into two parts; in 1830 it was elaborately illustrated with engravings after paintings by J. M. W. Turner and Thomas Stothard.

Guillaume-Emmanuel-Joseph Guilhem de Clermont-Lodève, baron de Sainte-Croix (1746-1809) Recherches historiques et critiques sur les mystères du paganisme. (Paris: 1817). The revised edition of a work first published in 1784.

Sallust (86 BC-35 BC) The Conspiracy of Cataline. (1st cent. BC).

Sallust (86 BC-35 BC) The War against Jugurtha. (1st cent. BC).

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) “The Black Dwarf” in Tales of my Landlord. 4 vols (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1816). Published with The Old Mortality.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Kenilworth: a Romance. 3 vols (Edinburgh: A. Constable and Co., 1821). A tale of Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Rob Roy. 3 vols (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co., 1818). Published anonymously, as the rest of the Waverley novels.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Tales of my Landlord. (Edinburgh: 1816-31). The four series consist of: The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality (1), The Heart of Mid-lothian (2), The Bride of Lammermoor and Legend of Montrose (3) and Count Robert and Castle Dangerous (4).

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Waverley: or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since. 3 vols (Edinburgh: Constable, 1814). Scott's first historical novel, set against the backdrop of the Jacobite rising of 1745.

Anna Seward [the Swan of Lichfield] (1742-1809) Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Darwin chiefly during his Residence at Lichfield: with Anecdotes of his Friends, and Criticisms on his Writings. (London: J. Johnson, 1804). On the literary circle at Lichfield.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) Adonais. An Elegy on the Death of John Keats. (Pisa: 1821). A pastoral elegy in Spenserian stanzas little noticed on its first publication.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) The Cenci: a Tragedy, in Five Acts. (London: C. and J. Ollier, 1819).

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) Prometheus Unbound a Lyric Drama in Four Acts: with other Poems. (London: C. and J. Ollier, 1820). A political allegory.

John Sheppard (1785-1879) Thoughts chiefly designed as preparative or persuasive to Private Devotion. (London: G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1824).

Robert Southey (1774-1843) A Vision of Judgement. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821). In the laureate's ode occasioned by the death of George III the king of Britain meets George Washington in Heaven.

Joseph Spence [Sir Harry Beaumont] (1699-1768) Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters, of Books and Men. (London: J. Murray, 1820). Edited by Edmond Malone; a rival edition was published at the same time.

John Taaffe (1787-1862) A Comment on the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. (London: J. Murray, 1822). All published.

Andrew Tooke (1673-1732) The Pantheon, representing the fabulous Histories of the heathen Gods and most illustrious Heroes. (London: 1698). A handbook used to teach classical mythology to schoolchildren.

William Turner (1792-1867) Journal of a Tour in the Levant. 3 vols (London: John Murray, 1820). Turner's account of swimming the Hellespont drew a reply from Byron.

William Vyse (1710-1770) “Ballad on Charlotte Lynes” in Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Darwin chiefly during his Residence at Lichfield. (London: J. Johnson, 1804). Anna Seward does not give a title.

James Waldegrave, second earl Waldegrave (1715-1763) Memoirs; being a short Account of political Contentions, party Quarrels, and Events of consequence from 1754 to 1758. (London: J. Murray, 1821). News from the court of George II.

Horace Walpole, fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797) Memoires of the last Ten Years of the Reign of George the Second. 2 vols (London: J. Murray, 1822). History as regarded by a keen Whig.

Joseph Warton (1722-1800) An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope. 2 vols (London: M. Cooper, 1756, 1782). Praises Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton at the expense of Pope.

John Wilson [Christopher North] (1785-1854) The Isle of Palms, and other Poems. (Edinburgh: J. Ballantyne, 1812). The first collection of poems by the author afterwards known as “Christopher North.”

Edward Young (1683-1765) The Complaint: or, Night-thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality. (London: Dodsley, 1742-1745). An oft-reprinted blank verse devotional poem that fostered gothic tastes in poetry.

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INFORMATION FROM TEI HEADER

Source Description:

Author: Moore, Thomas, 1779-1852

Title:  Letters and Journals of Lord Byron 2 Vols (London: John Murray, 1830).

Electronic Edition:

Series: Lord Byron and his Times: http://lordbyron.org

Encoding Description: Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.   Obvious and unambiguous compositors’ errors have been silently corrected.

Markup and editing by:  David Hill Radcliffe

Completed September 2008

Publication Statement:

Publisher: Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities, Virginia Tech

Availability: Published under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

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