The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals Volume II Part 90

[Footnote 5: Henry IV., Part II. act iv. se. 3.]

[Footnote 6: Mary Duff, his distant cousin, who lived not far from the "Plain-Stanes" of Aberdeen, in Byron's childhood. She married Mr. Robert c.o.c.kburn, a wine-merchant in Edinburgh and London.]

[Footnote 7: The first is, perhaps, Dallas; the second probably is Francis Hodgson, to whom he gave, from first to last, 1500.]

[Footnote 8:

"L'interet est l'ame de l'amour-propre, de sorte que comme le corps, prive de son ame, est sans vue, sans oue, sans connoissance, sans sentiment, et sans mouvement; de meme l'amour-propre, separe, s'il le faut dire ainsi, de son interet, ne voit, n'entend, ne sent, et ne se remue plus," etc., etc.

(Rochefoucault, Lettre a Madame Sable). The pa.s.sage in Lucretius probably is 'De Rerum Natura', i. 57-62.]

[Footnote 9:

"Monsieur de Puysegur," says Lady H. Leveson Gower ('Letters of Harriet, Countess of Granville', vol. i. p. 23), "is really 'concentre' into one wrinkle. It is the oldest, gayest, thinnest, most withered, and most brilliant thing one can meet with. When there are so many young, fat fools going about the world, I wish for the transmigration of souls. Puysegur might animate a whole family."

The phrase, of which Byron was in search, is Goethe's, 'eine erstarrte Musik' (Stevens's 'Life of Madame de Stael', vol. ii. p. 195).]

[Footnote 10: That the poet sometimes dined seems evident from the annexed bill:

Lord Byron.

To M. Richold

1813-- s. d.

Ballance of last bill 0 13 10 Aug. 9. To dinner bill 1 6 0 10. To do. do. 4 13 6 11. To do. do. 1 4 0 14. To do. do. 1 6 0 15. To share of do. 4 4 6 16. To dinner bill 1 6 0 17. To do. do. 1 6 6 19. To do. do. 1 2 6 20. To share of do. 4 19 0 21. To dinner bill 1 1 6 22. To do. do. 1 2 0 23. To do. do. 1 2 0 25. To do. do. 1 9 0 Aug. 26. To dinner bill 1 1 6 27. To do. do. 1 8 6 Sept 2. To do. do. 1 4 0 3. To do. do. 1 2 0 4. To do. do. 1 11 0 5. To do. do. 1 6 6 7. To do. do. 5 7 0 9. To do. do. 1 6 6 26. To do. do. 1 9 0 Nov. 14. To do. do. 1 0 6 21. To do. do. 0 19 0 -- -- -- 44 11 10]

[Footnote 11: Henry IV., Part II. act v. sc. 5.]

[Footnote 12: James Wedderburn Webster (see p. 2, note 1 [Footnote 1 of Letter 170]).]

[Footnote 13: Probably John Cam Hobhouse, whose expenses on the tour of 1809-10 were paid by Byron, and repaid by Sir Benjamin Hobhouse.]

Nov. 22, 1813.

"Orange Boven!" [1] So the bees have expelled the bear that broke open their hive. Well,--if we are to have new De Witts and De Ruyters, G.o.d speed the little republic! I should like to see the Hague and the village of Brock, where they have such primitive habits. Yet, I don't know,--their ca.n.a.ls would cut a poor figure by the memory of the Bosphorus; and the Zuyder Zee look awkwardly after "Ak-Denizi" [2]. No matter,--the bluff burghers, puffing freedom out of their short tobacco-pipes, might be worth seeing; though I prefer a cigar or a hooka, with the rose-leaf mixed with the milder herb of the Levant. I don't know what liberty means,--never having seen it,--but wealth is power all over the world; and as a s.h.i.+lling performs the duty of a pound (besides sun and sky and beauty for nothing) in the East,--_that_ is the country. How I envy Herodes Atticus [3]!--more than Pomponius. And yet a little _tumult_, now and then, is an agreeable quickener of sensation; such as a revolution, a battle, or an _aventure_ of any lively description. I think I rather would have been Bonneval, Ripperda, Alberoni, Hayreddin, or Horuc Barbarossa, or even Wortley Montague, than Mahomet himself. [4]

Rogers will be in town soon?--the 23d is fixed for our Middleton visit.

Shall I go? umph!--In this island, where one can't ride out without overtaking the sea, it don't much matter where one goes.

I remember the effect of the _first Edinburgh Review_ on me. I heard of it six weeks before,--read it the day of its denunciation,--dined and drank three bottles of claret, (with S. B. Davies, I think,) neither ate nor slept the less, but, nevertheless, was not easy till I had vented my wrath and my rhyme, in the same pages, against every thing and every body. Like George, in the _Vicar of Wakefield_,--"the fate of my paradoxes" [5] would allow me to perceive no merit in another. I remembered only the maxim of my boxing-master, which, in my youth, was found useful in all general riots,--"Whoever is not for you is against you--_mill_ away right and left," and so I did;--like Ishmael, my hand was against all men, and all men's anent me. I did wonder, to be sure, at my own success:

"And marvels so much wit is all his own," [6]

as Hobhouse sarcastically says of somebody (not unlikely myself, as we are old friends);--but were it to come over again, I would _not_. I have since redde the cause of my couplets, and it is not adequate to the effect. C----told me that it was believed I alluded to poor Lord Carlisle's nervous disorder in one of the lines. I thank Heaven I did not know it--and would not, could not, if I had. I must naturally be the last person to be pointed on defects or maladies.

Rogers is silent,--and, it is said, severe. When he does talk, he talks well; and, on all subjects of taste, his delicacy of expression is pure as his poetry. If you enter his house--his drawing-room--his library--you of yourself say, this is not the dwelling of a common mind.

There is not a gem, a coin, a book thrown aside on his chimney-piece, his sofa, his table, that does not bespeak an almost fastidious elegance in the possessor. But this very delicacy must be the misery of his existence. Oh the jarrings his disposition must have encountered through life!

Southey, I have not seen much of. His appearance is _Epic_; and he is the only existing entire man of letters. All the others have some pursuit annexed to their authors.h.i.+p. His manners are mild, but not those of a man of the world, and his talents of the first order. His prose is perfect. Of his poetry there are various opinions: there is, perhaps, too much of it for the present generation; posterity will probably select. He has _pa.s.sages_ equal to any thing. At present, he has _a party_, but no _public_--except for his prose writings. The life of Nelson is beautiful.

Sotheby [7] is a _Litterateur_, the Oracle of the Coteries, of the----s [8], Lydia White (Sydney Smith's "Tory Virgin") [9], Mrs. Wilmot [10]

(she, at least, is a swan, and might frequent a purer stream,) Lady Beaumont, [11] and all the Blues, with Lady Charlemont [12] at their head--but I say nothing of _her_--"look in her face and you forget them all," and every thing else. Oh that face!--by _te, Diva potens Cypri_, I would, to be beloved by that woman, build and burn another Troy.

Moore has a peculiarity of talent, or rather talents,--poetry, music, voice, all his own; and an expression in each, which never was, nor will be, possessed by another. But he is capable of still higher flights in poetry. By the by, what humour, what--every thing, in the "_Post-Bag!_"

There is nothing Moore may not do, if he will but seriously set about it. In society, he is gentlemanly, gentle, and, altogether, more pleasing than any individual with whom I am acquainted. For his honour, principle, and independence, his conduct to----speaks "trumpet-tongued."

He has but one fault--and that one I daily regret--he is not _here_.

[Footnote 1: Holland, const.i.tuted a kingdom for Louis Napoleon (1806), was (1810) incorporated with the French Empire. On November 15, 1813, the people of Amsterdam raised the cry of "Orange Boven!", donned the Orange colours, and expelled the French from the city. Their example was followed in other provinces, and on November 21, deputies arrived in London, asking the Prince of Orange to place himself at the head of the movement. He landed in Holland, November 30, and entered Amsterdam the next day in state.

A play was announced at Drury Lane, December 8, 1813, under the t.i.tle of 'Orange Boven', but it was suppressed because no licence had been obtained for its performance. It was produced December 10, 1813, and ran about ten nights.]

[Footnote 2: The Lake of Ak-Deniz, north-east of Antioch, into and out of which flows the Nahr-Ifrin to join the Nahr-el-Asy or Orontes.]

[Footnote 3: A typically wealthy Greek, as Pomponius Atticus was a typically wealthy Roman.]

[Footnote 4: Bonneval (1675-1747) was a French soldier of fortune, who served successively in the Austrian, Russian, and Turkish armies.

Ripperda (died 1737) a Dutch adventurer, became Prime Minister of Spain under Philip V., and after his fall turned Mohammedan. Alberoni (1664-1752) was an Italian adventurer, who became Prime Minister of Spain in 1714. Hayreddin (died 1547) and Horuc Barbarossa (died 1518) were Algerine pirates. Edward Wortley Montague (1713-1776), son of Lady Mary, saw the inside of several prisons, served at Fontenoy, sat in the British Parliament, was received into the Roman Catholic Church at Jerusalem (1764), lived at Rosetta as a Mohammedan with his mistress, Caroline Dormer, till 1772, and died at Padua, from swallowing a fish-bone.]

[Footnote 5: 'Vicar of Wakefield' (chap. xx.). The Vicar's eldest son, George,

"resolved to write a book that should be wholly new. I therefore dressed up three paradoxes with some ingenuity.... 'Well,' asks the Vicar, 'and what did the learned world say to your paradoxes?' 'Sir,'

replied my son, 'the learned world said nothing to my paradoxes, nothing at all.... I found that no genius in another could please me.