The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals Volume II Part 60

303.--To W. Gifford.

June 18, 1813.

My Dear Sir,--I feel greatly at a loss how to write to you at all--still more to thank you as I ought. If you knew the veneration with which I have ever regarded you, long before I had the most distant prospect of becoming your acquaintance, literary or personal, my embarra.s.sment would not surprise you.

Any suggestion of yours, even were it conveyed in the less tender shape of the text of the 'Baviad', or a Monk Mason note in Ma.s.singer, [1]

would have been obeyed; I should have endeavoured to improve myself by your censure: judge then if I shall be less willing to profit by your kindness. It is not for me to bandy compliments with my elders and my betters: I receive your approbation with grat.i.tude, and will not return my bra.s.s for your Gold by expressing more fully those sentiments of admiration, which, however sincere, would, I know, be unwelcome.

To your advice on Religious topics, I shall equally attend. Perhaps the best way will be by avoiding them altogether. The already published objectionable pa.s.sages have been much commented upon, but certainly have been rather _strongly_ interpreted. I am no Bigot to Infidelity, and did not expect that, because I doubted the immortality of Man, I should be charged with denying the existence of a G.o.d. It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and _our world_, when placed in compet.i.tion with the mighty whole, of which it is an atom, that first led me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity might be over-rated.

This, and being early disgusted with a Calvinistic Scotch school, where I was cudgelled to Church for the first ten years of my life, afflicted me with this malady; for, after all, it is, I believe, a disease of the mind as much as other kinds of hypochondria.

I regret to hear you talk of ill-health. May you long exist! not only to enjoy your own fame, but outlive that of fifty such ephemeral adventurers as myself.

As I do not sail quite so soon as Murray may have led you to expect (not till July) I trust I have some chance of taking you by the hand before my departure, and repeating in person how sincerely and affectionately I am

Your obliged servant,

BYRON.

[Footnote 1: See 'Letters', vol. i. p. 198 [Footnote 4 of Letter 192.]]

304.--To John Murray.

June 22, 1813.

Dear Sir,--I send you a _corrected_ copy of the lines with several _important_ alterations,--so many that this had better be sent for proof rather than subject the other to so many blots.

You will excuse the eternal trouble I inflict upon you. As you will see, I have attended to your Criticism, and softened a pa.s.sage you proscribed this morning.

Yours veritably,

B.

305.--To Thomas Moore.

June 22, 1813.

Yesterday I dined in company with Stael, the "Epicene," [1] whose politics are sadly changed. She is for the Lord of Israel and the Lord of Liverpool--a vile ant.i.thesis of a Methodist and a Tory--talks of nothing but devotion and the ministry, and, I presume, expects that G.o.d and the government will help her to a pension.

Murray, the [Greek: anax] of publishers, the Anak of stationers, has a design upon you in the paper line. He wants you to become the staple and stipendiary editor of a periodical work. What say you? Will you be bound, like "Kit Smart, to write for ninety-nine years in the _Universal Visitor?_" [2]

Seriously, he talks of hundreds a year, and--though I hate prating of the beggarly elements--his proposal may be to your honour and profit, and, I am very sure, will be to our pleasure.

I don't know what to say about "friends.h.i.+p." I never was in friends.h.i.+p but once, in my nineteenth year, and then it gave me as much trouble as love. I am afraid, as Whitbread's sire said to the king, when he wanted to knight him, that I am "too old;" [3] but nevertheless, no one wishes you more friends, fame, and felicity, than

Yours, etc.

[Footnote 1:

"'And ah! what verse can grace thy stately mien, Guide of the world, preferment's golden queen, Neckar's fair daughter, Stael the 'Epicene'!

Bright o'er whose flaming cheek and pumple nose The bloom of young desire unceasing glows!

Fain would the Muse--but ah! she dares no more, A mournful voice from lone 'Guyana's' sh.o.r.e, Sad Quatremer, the bold presumption checks, Forbid to question thy ambiguous s.e.x.'

"These lines contain the Secret History of Quatremer's deportation. He presumed, in the Council of Five Hundred, to arraign Madame de Stael's conduct, and even to hint a doubt of her s.e.x. He was sent to 'Guyana'.

The transaction naturally brings to one's mind the dialogue between Falstaff and Hostess Quickly in Shakespeare's 'Henry IV'."

'Canning's New Morality', lines 293-301 (Edmonds' edition of the 'Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin', pp. 282, 283).

Anne Louise Germaine Necker (1766-1817), only child of the Minister Necker and his wife Suzanne Curchod, Gibbon's early love, married, in 1786, the Swedish Amba.s.sador Baron de Stael Holstein, who died in 1802.

She married, as her second husband, in 1811, M. de Rocca, a young French officer, who had been severely wounded in Spain, but survived her by a year (Madame de Recamier, 'Souvenirs', vol. i. p. 272). Her book, 'De l'Allemagne', seized and destroyed by Napoleon, was brought out in June, 1813, by John Murray. Byron thought her

"certainly the cleverest, though not the most agreeable woman he had ever known. 'She declaimed to you instead of conversing with you,'

said he, 'never pausing except to take breath; and if during that interval a rejoinder was put in, it was evident that she did not attend to it, as she resumed the thread of her discourse as though it had not been interrupted'"

(Lady Blessington's 'Conversations', p. 26). Croker ('Croker Papers', vol. i. p. 327) describes her as