Life of Lord Byron Volume V Part 18

"You say you have written often: I have only received yours of the eleventh, which is very short. By this post, _five_ packets, I send you the tragedy of Sardanapalus, which is written in a rough hand: perhaps Mrs. Leigh can help you to decipher it. You will please to acknowledge it by return of post. You will remark that the _unities_ are all _strictly_ observed. The scene pa.s.ses in the same _hall_ always: the time, a _summer's night_, about nine hours, or less, though it begins before sunset and ends after sun-rise. In the third act, when Sardanapalus calls for a _mirror_ to look at himself in his armour, recollect to quote the Latin pa.s.sage 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."

LETTER 433. TO MR. HOPPNER.

"Ravenna, May 31. 1821.

"I enclose you another letter, which will only confirm what I have said to you.

"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, ever, &c.

"P.S. Did you receive two letters of Douglas Kinnaird's in an 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 pet.i.tion, 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?"

LETTER 434. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, June 4. 1821.

"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 d.a.m.n'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 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[39]? You see 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.

"Did you receive my letters with the two or three concluding sheets of Memoranda?

"There are no news here to interest much. A German spy (_boasting_ himself such) was stabbed last week, but _not_ mortally. The moment I heard that he went about bullying and boasting, it was easy for me, or any one else, to foretell what would occur to him, which I did, and it came to pa.s.s in two days after. He has got off, however, for a slight incision.

"A row the other night, about a lady of the place, between her various lovers, occasioned a midnight discharge of pistols, but n.o.body wounded. Great scandal, however--planted by her lover--_to be_ thrashed by her husband, for inconstancy to her regular Servente, who is coming home post about it, and she herself retired in confusion into the country, although it is the acme of the opera season. All the women furious against her (she herself having been censorious) for being _found out_. She is a pretty woman--a Countess * * * *--a fine old Visigoth name, or Ostrogoth.

"The Greeks! what think you? They are my old acquaintances--but what to think I know not. Let us hope howsomever.

"Yours,

"B."

[Footnote 39: In their eagerness, like true controversialists, to avail themselves of every pa.s.sing 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 embarra.s.sing position, the most provoking feature of which is, that it excites more amus.e.m.e.nt 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 be 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 sc.r.a.p 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 pa.s.sing from my memory. When Lord Byron took the field against Mr.

Bowles's Letter, this unlucky sc.r.a.p, 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 n.o.ble a.s.sailant, 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 sc.r.a.pe, 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 n.o.ble disputant triumphantly applied it. Such are the consequences of one's near and dear friends taking to controversy.]

LETTER 435. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, June 22. 1821.

"Your dwarf of a letter came yesterday. That is right;--keep to your 'magnum opus '--magnoperate away. Now, if we were but together a little to combine our 'Journal of Trevoux!' But it is useless to sigh, and yet very natural,--for I think you and I draw better together, in the social line, than any two other living authors.

"I forgot to ask you, if you had seen your own panegyric in the correspondence of Mrs. Waterhouse and Colonel Berkeley? To be sure _their_ moral is not quite exact; but _your pa.s.sion_ 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 _pa.s.sion_; 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 a.s.ses 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 Murray a new tragedy, ycleped 'Sardanapalus,' writ according to Aristotle--all, save the chorus--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 connection with travellers.

"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 436. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, July 5. 1821.

"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.