Life of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 33

LETTER 384. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, Sept. 11. 1820.

"Here is another historical _note_ for you. I want to be as near truth as the drama can be.

"Last post I sent you a note fierce as Faliero himself[81], in answer to a trashy tourist, who pretends that he could have been introduced to me. Let me have a proof of it, that I may cut its lava into some shape.

"What Gifford says is very consolatory (of the first act). English, sterling _genuine English_, is a desideratum amongst you, and I am glad that I have got so much left; though Heaven knows how I retain it: I _hear_ none but from my valet, and his is _Nottinghams.h.i.+re_: and I _see_ none but in your new publications, and theirs is _no_ language at all, but jargon. Even your * * * *

is terribly stilted and affected, with '_very, very_' so soft and pamby.

"Oh! if ever I do come amongst you again, I will give you such a 'Baviad and Maeviad!' not as good as the old, but even _better merited_. There never was such a _set_ as your _ragam.u.f.fins_ (I mean _not_ yours only, but every body's). What with the c.o.c.kneys, and the Lakers, and the _followers_ of Scott, and Moore, and Byron, you are in the very uttermost decline and degradation of literature. I can't think of it without all the remorse of a murderer. I wish that Johnson were alive again to crush them!"

[Footnote 81: The angry note against English travellers appended to this tragedy, in consequence of an a.s.sertion made by some recent tourist, that he (or as it afterwards turned out, she) "had repeatedly declined an introduction to Lord Byron while in Italy."]

LETTER 385. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, Sept. 14. 1820.

"What! not a line? Well, have it your own way.

"I wish you would inform Perry, that his stupid paragraph is the cause of all my newspapers being stopped in Paris. The fools believe me in your infernal country, and have not sent on their gazettes, so that I know nothing of your beastly trial of the Queen.

"I cannot avail myself of Mr. Gifford's remarks, because I have received none, except on the first act. Yours, &c.

"P.S. Do, pray, beg the editors of papers to say any thing blackguard they please; but not to put me amongst their arrivals.

They do me more mischief by such nonsense than all their abuse can do."

LETTER 386. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, Sept. 21. 1820.

"So you are at your old tricks again. This is the second packet I have received unaccompanied by a single line of good, bad, or indifferent. It is strange that you have never forwarded any further observations of Gifford's. How am I to alter or amend, if I hear no further? or does this silence mean that it is well enough as it is, or too bad to be repaired? If the last, why do you not say so at once, instead of playing pretty, while you know that soon or late you must out with the truth.

"Yours, &c.

"P.S. My sister tells me that you sent to her to enquire where I was, believing in my arrival, _driving a curricle_, &c. &c. into Palace-yard. Do you think me a c.o.xcomb or a madman, to be capable of such an exhibition? My sister knew me better, and told you, that could not be me. You might as well have thought me entering on 'a pale horse,' like Death in the Revelations."

LETTER 387. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, Sept. '23. 1820.

"Get from Mr. Hobhouse, and send me a proof (with the Latin) of my Hints from Horace; it has now the _nonum prematur in annum_ complete for its production, being written at Athens in 1811. I have a notion that, with some omissions of names and pa.s.sages, it will do; and I could put my late observations _for_ Pope amongst the notes, with the date of 1820, and so on. As far as versification goes, it is good; and, on looking back to what I wrote about that period, I am astonished to see how _little_ I have trained on. I wrote better then than now; but that comes of my having fallen into the atrocious bad taste of the times. If I can trim it for present publication, what with the other things you have of mine, you will have a volume or two of _variety_ at least, for there will be all measures, styles, and topics, whether good or no. I am anxious to hear what Gifford thinks of the tragedy: pray let me know. I really do not know what to think myself.

"If the Germans pa.s.s the Po, they will be treated to a ma.s.s out of the Cardinal de Retz's _Breviary_. * *'s a fool, and could not understand this: Frere will. It is as pretty a conceit as you would wish to see on a summer's day.

"n.o.body here believes a word of the evidence against the Queen. The very mob cry shame against their countrymen, and say, that for half the money spent upon the trial, any testimony whatever may be brought out of Italy. This you may rely upon as fact. I told you as much before. As to what travellers report, what _are travellers_?

Now I have _lived_ among the Italians--not _Florenced_, and _Romed_, and galleried, and conversationed it for a few months, and then home again; but been of their families, and friends.h.i.+ps, and feuds, and loves, and councils, and correspondence, in a part of Italy least known to foreigners,--and have been amongst them of all cla.s.ses, from the Conte to the Contadine; and you may be sure of what I say to you.

"Yours," &c.

LETTER 388. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, Sept. 28. 1820.

"I thought that I had told you long ago, that it never was intended nor written with any view to the stage. I have said so in the preface too. It is too long and too regular for your stage, the persons too few, and the _unity_ too much observed. It is more like a play of Alfieri's than of your stage (I say this humbly in speaking of that great man); but there is poetry, and it is equal to Manfred, though I know not what esteem is held of Manfred.

"I have now been nearly as long _out_ of England as I was there during the time I saw you frequently. I came home July 14th, 1811, and left again April 25th, 1816: so that Sept. 28th, 1820, brings me within a very few months of the same duration of time of my stay and my absence. In course, I can know nothing of the public taste and feelings, but from what I glean from letters, &c. Both seem to be as bad as possible.

"I thought _Anastasius excellent_: did I not say so? Matthews's Diary most excellent; it, and Forsyth, and parts of Hobhouse, are all we have of truth or sense upon Italy. The Letter to Julia very good indeed, I do not despise * * * * * *; but if she knit blue stockings instead of wearing them, it would be better. _You_ are taken in by that false stilted trashy style, which is a mixture of all the styles of the day, which are _all bombastic_ (I don't except my _own_--no one has done more through negligence to corrupt the language); but it is neither English nor poetry. Time will show.

"I am sorry Gifford has made no further remarks beyond the first Act: does he think all the English equally sterling as he thought the first? You did right to send the proofs: I was a fool; but I do really detest the sight of proofs: it is an absurdity; but comes from laziness.

"You can steal the two Juans into the world quietly, tagged to the others. The play as you will--the Dante too; but the _Pulci_ I am proud of: it is superb; you have no such translation. It is the best thing I ever did in my life. I wrote the play from beginning to end, and not a _single scene without interruption_, and being obliged to break off in the middle; for I had my hands full, and my head, too, just then; so it can be no great shakes--I mean the play; and the head too, if you like.

"P.S. Politics here still savage and uncertain. However, we are all in our 'bandaliers,' to join the 'Highlanders if they cross the Forth,' _i.e._ to crush the Austrians if they cross the Po. The rascals!--and that dog Liverpool, to say their subjects are _happy_! If ever I come back, I'll work some of these ministers.

"Sept. 29.

"I opened my letter to say, that on reading _more_ of the four volumes on Italy, where the author says 'declined an introduction,'

I perceive (_horresco referens_) it is written by a WOMAN!!! In that case you must suppress my note and answer, and all I have said about the book and the writer. I never dreamed of it until now, in my extreme wrath at that precious note. I can only say that I am sorry that a lady should say any thing of the kind. What I would have said to one of the other s.e.x you know already. Her book too (as a _she_ book) is not a bad one; but she evidently don't know the Italians, or rather don't like them, and forgets the _causes_ of their misery and profligacy (_Matthews_ and _Forsyth_ are your men for truth and tact), and has gone over Italy in _company_--_always_ a _bad_ plan: you must be _alone_ with people to know them well. Ask her, who was the '_descendant of Lady M.W.

Montague_,' and by whom? by Algarotti?

"I suspect that, in Marino Faliero, you and yours won't like the _politics_, which are perilous to you in these times; but recollect that it is _not a political_ play, and that I was obliged to put into the mouths of the characters the sentiments upon which they acted. I hate all things written like Pizarro, to represent France, England, and so forth. All I have done is meant to be purely Venetian, even to the very prophecy of its present state.

"Your Angles in general know little of the _Italians_, who detest them for their numbers and their GENOA treachery. Besides, the English travellers have not been composed of the best company. How could they?--out of 100,000, how many gentlemen were there, or honest men?

"Mitch.e.l.l's Aristophanes is excellent. Send me the rest of it.

"These fools will force me to write a book about Italy myself, to give them 'the loud lie.' They prate about a.s.sa.s.sination; what is it but the origin of duelling--and '_a wild justice_,' as Lord Bacon calls it? It is the fount of the modern point of honour in what the laws can't or _won't_ reach. Every man is liable to it more or less, according to circ.u.mstances or place. For instance, I am living here exposed to it daily, for I have happened to make a powerful and unprincipled man my enemy;--and I never sleep the worse for it, or ride in less solitary places, because precaution is useless, and one thinks of it as of a disease which may or may not strike. It is true that there are those here, who, if he did, would 'live to think on't;' but that would not awake my bones: I should be sorry if it would, were they once at rest."

LETTER 389. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 8bre 6, 1820.

"You will have now received all the Acts, corrected, of the Marino Faliero. What you say of the 'bet of 100 guineas' made by some one who says that he saw me last week, reminds me of what happened in 1810: you can easily ascertain the fact, and it is an odd one.

"In the latter end of 1811, I met one evening at the Alfred my old school and form fellow (for we were within two of each other, _he_ the higher, though both very near the top of our remove,) _Peel_, the Irish secretary. He told me that, in 1810, he met me, as he thought, in St. James's Street, but we pa.s.sed without speaking. He mentioned this, and it was denied as impossible, I being then in Turkey. A day or two afterward, he pointed out to his brother a person on the opposite side of the way:--'There,' said he, 'is the man whom I took for Byron.' His brother instantly answered, 'Why, it is Byron, and no one else.' But this is not all:--I was _seen_ by somebody to _write down my name_ amongst the enquirers after the King's health, then attacked by insanity. Now, at this very period, as nearly as I could make out, I was ill of a _strong fever_ at Patras, caught in the marshes near Olympia, from the _malaria_. If I had died there, this would have been a new ghost story for you.