Life of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 20

Were it not easy, sir, and is't not sweet To make thyself beloved? and to be Omnipotent by Mercy's means? for thus Thy sovereignty would grow but more complete, A despot thou, and yet thy people free, And by the heart, not hand, enslaving us.

"There, you dogs! there's a sonnet for you: you won't have such as that in a hurry from Mr. Fitzgerald. You may publish it with my name, an' ye wool. He deserves all praise, bad and good; it was a very n.o.ble piece of princ.i.p.ality. Would you like an epigram--a translation?

"If for silver, or for gold, You could melt ten thousand pimples Into half a dozen dimples, Then your face we might behold, Looking, doubtless, much more snugly, Yet ev'n _then_ 'twould be d----d _ugly_.

"This was written on some Frenchwoman, by Rulhieres, I believe.

Yours."

[Footnote 42: The "Dama," in whose company he witnessed this representation, thus describes its effect upon him:--"The play was that of Mirra; the actors, and particularly the actress who performed the part of Mirra, seconded with much success the intentions of our great dramatist. Lord Byron took a strong interest in the representation, and it was evident that he was deeply affected. At length there came a point of the performance at which he could no longer restrain his emotions;--he burst into a flood of tears, and, his sobs preventing him from remaining any longer in the box, he rose and left the theatre.--I saw him similarly affected another time during a representation of Alfieri's 'Philip,' at Ravenna."--"Gli attori, e specialmente l' attrice che rappresentava Mirra secondava a.s.sai bene la mente del nostro grande tragico. L.B. prece molto interesse alla rappresentazione, e si conosceva che era molto commosso. Venne un punto poi della tragedia in cui non pote piu frenare la sua emozione,--diede in un diretto pianto e i singhiozzi gl' impedirono di piu restare nel palco; onde si lev, e parti dal teatro. In uno stato simile lo viddi un altra volta a Ravenna ad una rappresentazione del Filippo d'Alfieri."]

LETTER 338. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Bologna, August 23. 1819.

"I send you a letter to R * *ts, signed Wortley Clutterbuck, which you may publish in what form you please, in answer to his article.

I have had many proofs of men's absurdity, but he beats all in folly. Why, the wolf in sheep's clothing has tumbled into the very trap! We'll strip him. The letter is written in great haste, and amidst a thousand vexations. Your letter only came yesterday, so that there is no time to polish: the post goes out to-morrow. The date is 'Little Piddlington.' Let * * * * correct the press: he knows and can read the handwriting. Continue to keep the _anonymous_ about 'Juan;' it helps us to fight against overwhelming numbers. I have a thousand distractions at present; so excuse haste, and wonder I can act or write at all. Answer by post, as usual.

"Yours.

"P.S. If I had had time, and been quieter and nearer, I would have cut him to hash; but as it is, you can judge for yourselves."

The letter to the Reviewer, here mentioned, had its origin in rather an amusing circ.u.mstance. In the first Canto of Don Juan appeared the following pa.s.sage:--

"For fear some prudish readers should grow skittish, I've bribed My Grandmother's Review,--the Britis.h.!.+

"I sent it in a letter to the editor, Who thank'd me duly by return of post-- I'm for a handsome article his creditor; Yet if my gentle Muse he please to roast, And break a promise after having made it her, Denying the receipt of what it cost, And smear his page with gall instead of honey, All I can say is--that he had the money."

On the appearance of the poem, the learned editor of the Review in question allowed himself to be decoyed into the ineffable absurdity of taking the charge as serious, and, in his succeeding number, came forth with an indignant contradiction of it. To this tempting subject the letter, written so hastily off at Bologna, related; but, though printed for Mr. Murray, in a pamphlet consisting of twenty-three pages, it was never published by him.[43] Being valuable, however, as one of the best specimens we have of Lord Byron's simple and thoroughly English prose, I shall here preserve some extracts from it.

[Footnote 43: It appeared afterwards in the Liberal.]

"TO THE EDITOR OF THE BRITISH REVIEW.

"My dear R----ts,

"As a believer in the Church of England--to say nothing of the State--I have been an occasional reader, and great admirer, though not a subscriber, to your Review. But I do not know that any article of its contents ever gave me much surprise till the eleventh of your late twenty-seventh number made its appearance.

You have there most manfully refuted a calumnious accusation of bribery and corruption, the credence of which in the public mind might not only have damaged your reputation as a clergyman and an editor, but, what would have been still worse, have injured the circulation of your journal; which, I regret to hear, is not so extensive as the 'purity (as you well observe) of its, &c. &c.' and the present taste for propriety, would induce us to expect. The charge itself is of a solemn nature; and, although in verse, is couched in terms of such circ.u.mstantial gravity as to induce a belief little short of that generally accorded to the thirty-nine articles, to which you so generously subscribed on taking your degrees. It is a charge the most revolting to the heart of man from its frequent occurrence; to the mind of a statesman from its occasional truth; and to the soul of an editor from its moral impossibility. You are charged then in the last line of one octave stanza, and the whole eight lines of the next, viz. 209th and 210th of the first Canto of that 'pestilent poem,' Don Juan, with receiving, and still more foolishly acknowledging, the receipt of certain moneys to eulogise the unknown author, who by this account must be known to you, if to n.o.body else. An impeachment of this nature, so seriously made, there is but one way of refuting; and it is my firm persuasion, that whether you did or did not (and _I_ believe that you did not) receive the said moneys, of which I wish that he had specified the sum, you are quite right in denying all knowledge of the transaction. If charges of this nefarious description are to go forth, sanctioned by all the solemnity of circ.u.mstance, and guaranteed by the veracity of verse (as Counsellor Phillips would say), what is to become of readers. .h.i.therto implicitly confident in the not less veracious prose of our critical journals? what is to become of the reviews; and, if the reviews fail, what is to become of the editors? It is common cause, and you have done well to sound the alarm. I myself, in my humble sphere, will be one of your echoes. In the words of the tragedian Liston, 'I love a row,' and you seem justly determined to make one.

"It is barely possible, certainly improbable, that the writer might have been in jest; but this only aggravates his crime. A joke, the proverb says, 'breaks no bones;' but it may break a bookseller, or it may be the cause of bones being broken. The jest is but a bad one at the best for the author, and might have been a still worse one for you, if your copious contradiction did not certify to all whom it may concern your own indignant innocence, and the immaculate purity of the British Review. I do not doubt your word, my dear R----ts, yet I cannot help wis.h.i.+ng that, in a case of such vital importance, it had a.s.sumed the more substantial shape of an affidavit sworn before the Lord Mayor Atkins, who readily receives any deposition; and doubtless would have brought it in some way as evidence of the designs of the Reformers to set fire to London, at the same time that he himself meditates the same good office towards the river Thames.

"I recollect hearing, soon after the publication, this subject discussed at the tea-table of Mr. * * * the poet,--and Mrs. and the Misses * * * * * being in a corner of the room perusing the proof sheets of Mr. * * *'s poems, the male part of the _conversazione_ were at liberty to make some observations on the poem and pa.s.sage in question, and there was a difference of opinion. Some thought the allusion was to the 'British Critic;' others, that by the expression 'My Grandmother's Review,' it was intimated that 'my grandmother' was not the reader of the review, but actually the writer; thereby insinuating, my dear Mr. R----ts, that you were an old woman; because, as people often say, 'Jeffrey's Review,"

'Gifford's Review,' in lieu of Edinburgh and Quarterly, so 'My Grandmother's Review' and R----ts's might be also synonymous. Now, whatever colour this insinuation might derive from the circ.u.mstance of your wearing a gown, as well as from your time of life, your general style, and various pa.s.sages of your writings,--I will take upon myself to exculpate you from all suspicion of the kind, and a.s.sert, without calling Mrs. R----ts in testimony, that if ever you should be chosen Pope, you will pa.s.s through all the previous ceremonies with as much credit as any pontiff since the parturition of Joan. It is very unfair to judge of s.e.x from writings, particularly from those of the British Review. We are all liable to be deceived, and it is an indisputable fact that many of the best articles in your journal, which were attributed to a veteran female, were actually written by you yourself, and yet to this day there are people who could never find out the difference. But let us return to the more immediate question.

"I agree with you that it is impossible Lord B. should be the author, not only because, as a British peer and a British poet, it would be impracticable for him to have recourse to such facetious fiction, but for some other reasons which you have omitted to state. In the first place, his Lords.h.i.+p has no grandmother. Now the author--and we may believe him in this--doth expressly state that the 'British' is his 'Grandmother's Review;' and if, as I think I have distinctly proved, this was not a mere figurative allusion to your supposed intellectual age and s.e.x, my dear friend, it follows, whether you be she or no, that there is such an elderly lady still extant.

"Shall I give you what I think a prudent opinion? I don't mean to insinuate, G.o.d forbid! but if, by any accident, there should have been such a correspondence between you and the unknown author, whoever he may be, send him back his money; I dare say he will be very glad to have it again; it can't be much, considering the value of the article and the circulation of the journal; and you are too modest to rate your praise beyond its real worth:--don't be angry, I know you won't, at this apprais.e.m.e.nt of your powers of eulogy: for on the other hand, my dear fellow, depend upon it your abuse is worth, not its own weight, that's a feather, but _your_ weight in gold. So don't spare it; if he has bargained for _that_, give it handsomely, and depend upon your doing him a friendly office.

"What the motives of this writer may have been for (as you magnificently translate his quizzing you) 'stating, with the particularity which belongs to fact, the forgery of a groundless fiction,' (do, pray, my dear R., talk a little less 'in King Cambyses' vein,') I cannot pretend to say; perhaps to laugh at you, but that is no reason for your benevolently making all the world laugh also. I approve of your being angry, I tell you I am angry too, but you should not have shown it so outrageously. Your solemn '_if_ somebody personating the Editor of the, &c. &c. has received from Lord B. or from any other person,' reminds me of Charley Incledon's usual exordium when people came into the tavern to hear him sing without paying their share of the reckoning--'if a maun, or _ony_ maun, or _ony other_ maun,' &c. &c.; you have both the same redundant eloquence. But why should you think any body would personate you? n.o.body would dream of such a prank who ever read your compositions, and perhaps not many who have heard your conversation. But I have been inoculated with a little of your prolixity. The fact is, my dear R----ts, that somebody has tried to make a fool of you, and what he did not succeed in doing, you have done for him and for yourself."

Towards the latter end of August, Count Guiccioli, accompanied by his lady, went for a short time to visit some of his Romagnese estates, while Lord Byron remained at Bologna alone. And here, with a heart softened and excited by the new feeling that had taken possession of him, he appears to have given himself up, during this interval of solitude, to a train of melancholy and impa.s.sioned thought, such as, for a time, brought back all the romance of his youthful days. That spring of natural tenderness within his soul, which neither the world's efforts nor his own had been able to chill or choke up, was now, with something of its first freshness, set flowing once more. He again knew what it was to love and be loved,--too late, it is true, for happiness, and too wrongly for peace, but with devotion enough, on the part of the woman, to satisfy even his thirst for affection, and with a sad earnestness, on his own, a foreboding fidelity, which made him cling but the more pa.s.sionately to this attachment from feeling that it would be his last.

A circ.u.mstance which he himself used to mention as having occurred at this period will show how over-powering, at times, was the rush of melancholy over his heart. It was his fancy, during Madame Guiccioli's absence from Bologna, to go daily to her house at his usual hour of visiting her, and there, causing her apartments to be opened, to sit turning over her books, and writing in them.[44] He would then descend into her garden, where he pa.s.sed hours in musing; and it was on an occasion of this kind, as he stood looking, in a state of unconscious reverie, into one of those fountains so common in the gardens of Italy, that there came suddenly into his mind such desolate fancies, such bodings of the misery he might bring on her he loved, by that doom which (as he has himself written) "makes it fatal to be loved[45]," that, overwhelmed with his own thoughts, he burst into an agony of tears.

During the same few days it was that he wrote in the last page of Madame Guiccioli's copy of "Corinne" the following remarkable note:--

"My dearest Teresa,--I have read this book in your garden;--my love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a favourite book of yours, and the writer was a friend of mine. You will not understand these English words, and _others_ will not understand them--which is the reason I have not scrawled them in Italian. But you will recognise the hand-writing of him who pa.s.sionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book which was yours, he could only think of love. In that word, beautiful in all languages, but most so in yours--_Amor mio_--is comprised my existence here and hereafter. I feel I exist here, and I fear that I shall exist hereafter,--to _what_ purpose you will decide; my destiny rests with you, and you are a woman, seventeen years of age, and two out of a convent. I wish that you had stayed there, with all my heart,--or, at least, that I had never met you in your married state.

"But all this is too late. I love you, and you love me,--at least, you _say so_, and _act_ as if you _did_ so, which last is a great consolation in all events. But _I_ more than love you, and cannot cease to love you.

"Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and the ocean divide us,--but they never will, unless you _wish_ it. BYRON.

"Bologna, August 25. 1819."

[Footnote 44: One of these notes, written at the end of the 5th chapter, 18th book of Corinne ("Fragmens des Pensees de Corinne") is as follows:--

"I knew Madame de Stael well,--better than she knew Italy,--but I little thought that, one day, I should _think with her thoughts_, in the country where she has laid the scene of her most attractive productions. She is sometimes right, and often wrong, about Italy and England; but almost always true in delineating the heart, which is of but one nation, and of no country,--or, rather, of all.

"BYRON.

"Bologna, August 23. 1819."

[Footnote 45:

"Oh Love! what is it, in this world of ours, Which makes it fatal to be loved? ah! why With cypress branches hast thou wreath'd thy bowers, And made thy best interpreter a sigh?

As those who dote on odours pluck the flowers, And place them on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s--but place to die.-- Thus the frail beings we would fondly cherish Are laid within our bosoms but to perish."

LETTER 339. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Bologna, August 24. 1819.

"I wrote to you by last post, enclosing a buffooning letter for publication, addressed to the buffoon R----ts, who has thought proper to tie a canister to his own tail. It was written off-hand, and in the midst of circ.u.mstances not very favourable to facetiousness, so that there may, perhaps, be more bitterness than enough for that sort of small acid punch:--you will tell me.

"Keep the anonymous, in any case: it helps what fun there may be.

But if the matter grow serious about _Don Juan_, and you feel _yourself_ in a sc.r.a.pe, or _me_ either, _own that I am the author._ _I_ will never _shrink_; and if _you_ do, I can always answer you in the question of Guatimozin to his minister--each being on his own coals.[46]

"I wish that I had been in better spirits; but I am out of sorts, out of nerves, and now and then (I begin to fear) out of my senses.

All this Italy has done for me, and not England: I defy all you, and your climate to boot, to make me mad. But if ever I do really become a bedlamite, and wear a strait waistcoat, let me be brought back among you; your people will then be proper company.